Graff Luxury Watches
Graff Luxury Watches: Founded by Laurence Graff OBE in 1960, high jewellery brand Graff remains a family business. Since its inception, Graff has been discovering and crafting diamonds of brilliance and rarity, transforming them into spectacular pieces of jewellery that move the heart and stir the soul. The brand, in 2008, launched its luxury watch division, which combines imaginative design and exceptional Swiss engineering to create captivating watch collections and bespoke timepieces. This year too, the marque has unveiled stunning high jewellery watches and artistic masterpieces
Fancy Vivid Yellow
Featuring the rarest and most valuable shade of yellow diamonds, Fancy Vivid Yellow is a timepiece with an oval dial that has been crafted in yellow gold to complement the stones’ golden hue. Chosen for their exceptional colour and rich character, each diamond is hand-selected by a member of the Graff family. The piece comprises 204 diamonds totalling over 32 carats, all of which have been meticulously colour-matched.
Graff has also released another timepiece that is similar in design but features a round dial with a sensational, vibrant halo of oval yellow diamonds. The diamonds upon the bracelets for both watches are set at slightly different angles to ensure that the watches constantly catch the light, emphasising their colour and brilliance.
Graff Watches: Gyrograff Temple of Heaven and Great Wall of China
The piece-unique watches showcase intricate métiers d’art techniques in watches that are also complex mechanical timekeepers. Graff’s artisans have brought these historic structures to life using hand-engraving, miniature painting and gem-setting techniques. The results are intricate, three-dimensional, almost lifelike pieces of art that took up to 100 hours to create, and can only fully be appreciated under a loupe.
Both watches are powered by a spectacular hand-wound calibre that features a unique trio of complications – a whirring double-axis tourbillon, a three-dimensional moon phase and a power reserve indicator. The three-dimensional white-gold moon phase complication at 10 o’clock is hand-engraved, creating a true-to-life map of the lunar surface’s craters. The black cover representing the shadow of the Earth advances twice a day and completes a full rotation over a period of 29.5 days, mimicking the phases of the moon. The watch has a 65-hour power reserve indicated at 1 o’clock alongside Graff’s diamond-set icon at 12 o’clock. Both pieces have 48mm rose-gold cases decorated with invisible mosaic-set baguette-cut diamonds, and each watch comes on a black alligator strap with a diamond-set deployment clasp buckle.
Gyrograff Temple of Heaven
The dial of the GyroGraff Temple of Heaven is comprised of four layers in relief, starting with an aventurine background. The second layer depicts the temple and has several parts. The main part is a three-dimensional gold piece finished with miniature painting. The summit of the building and the frame around the baguette diamond are solid yellow gold. The base of the building features gold-painted detailing. Finally, the three tiers are close-set with rows of baguette-cut diamonds. The third and fourth layers make up the engraved stairs and brick wall, which are miniature-painted.
Graff GyroGraff Great Wall of China
The dial of the GyroGraff Great Wall of China has four layers, each in relief, starting with a background made of aventurine, creating the look of a starry sky. The second forms the towers and walls, made from a hand-engraved gold mount. The brick detailing is added by a skilled artist using a special ink that will patinate the gold. The third is the green forest, made of finely-hammered gold, and also miniature-painted. The fourth is the paved area of the wall that climbs up the dial, and the top level of the right-hand tower, both of which are invisibly-set with baguette-cut diamonds, all of which are a unique shape and weight.
Graff GyroGraff Endangered Species
The GyroGraff Endangered Species collection is a series of five piece-unique watches (four for Baselworld); all feature dials set with precious stones and gold, hand-finished, and using a technique pioneered by Graff called diamond-marquetry. The five dials depict an elephant, a tiger, a panda, a gorilla or a rhino (all under threat). The animals are created from a combination of polished metal parts and precious stones, each of which is unique in size, weight and cut. These are individually set into the dial by hand to create the form of each animal.
The dials require careful, detailed planning. The process starts with artistic drawings of the dials, with openings for the GyroGraff’s signature double-axis tourbillon and spherical moon phase complications, and with space for a power reserve indicator at 1 o’clock. Skilled craftsmen and highly experienced engineers create detailed technical drawings that break the dials down into the individual components that will come together to create the final form. The number of individual dial components depends on the design – the gorilla has the most at 139, the elephant has 135, the tiger 127, and the panda 112.
The dials feature between three and six larger mounts depending on the piece, each of them unique. Each gold mount then holds a number of white or black gold ‘plaquettes’, or small plates. Each plaquette carries a number that can only be seen under a microscope and that corresponds to the gold part or stone created specifically for it. It is the gem-setters’ job to match these up during assembly.
The first layer applied to the dial is a background made of sparkling midnight blue aventurine. The animal form is then built up, piece-by-piece, using the mounts, the plaquettes and the decorative elements: diamonds, pieces made of polished rhodium-plated white gold or matte or micro-blasted black gold, and, only in the case of the tiger, cognac sapphires. Some of the pieces are tiny; the elephant’s eye is a mere 0.9mm polished gold cabochon.
The five watches share the same high-end, hand-wound calibre featuring a double-axis tourbillon, a spherical moon phase, and a power reserve indicator. The three-dimensional white-gold moon phase complication at 10 o’clock is hand-engraved. The black cover representing the shadow of the Earth advances twice a day and completes a full rotation over a period of 29.5 days, similar to the phases of the moon. The watch has a 65-hour power reserve indicator at 1 o’clock alongside Graff’s diamond-set icon at 12 o’clock.
Each of the five Endangered Species models has a 48mm white-gold case, decorated with invisible mosaic-set baguette-cut diamonds, and comes on a black alligator strap with a diamond-set deployment clasp buckle.
