Vacheron Constantin’s Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Animal Kingdom Combines Nature And Rare Crafts

The general vocabulary of decorative arts used in watchmaking, for obvious reasons, has considerable overlap with the jeweler’s art, and includes various type of engraving and engine-turning, enameling, gem-setting, inlaying, and so on. This new series of six watches from Vacheron Constantin does things a little differently – the timepieces use crafts which it’s most unusual to find in horology, to create dial designs based on motifs derived from nature. The amount of space that the artisans have to work with is restricted to the space between the surface of the dial and the underside of the crystals, with just 4mm of room in the 42mm case. The challenge therefore is to create a strong impression of visual depth and texture in the space available, and each of the six artists who partnered with Vacheron for the project brought the unique features of their craft to the challenge.

The mechanical basis for the project is Vacheron’s caliber 2460 G4, which shows the hours, minutes, day of the week, and the date, through four apertures spaced an equal distance around the dial. The design leaves most of the dial unobstructed and Vacheron has used the movement on many occasions for watches which show off the decorative arts, including  the Tribute to Great Civilizations series, and the Legend of the Chinese Zodiac series. The handcrafts used for the Tribute to the Animal Kingdom include plumasserie (creating decorative patterns with feathers); glass sculpting; micro-origami; gold embroidery; paper sculpting (which is a craft distinct from origami); and an unusual style of wood marquetry.

The Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Animal Kingdom Feathersnake

The Feathersnake depicts a serpent, which is sculpted in brass before the feathers are cut to shape, attached to silk paper, and finally, attached to the dial.

The dial decoration uses goose feathers, as well as the spectacular iridescent feathers of the Himalayan monal (Lophophorus impejanus, whose conservation status is “least concern.”) There are two hundred individual pieces used to create the sculpture of the snake and the design is quite rich symbolically – the feathered serpent is a well known mythological motif in Mesoamerican mythology). The eye of the snake is done in gold and enamel.

The artist who created the Feathersnake dial, Julien Vermeulen, says, “The smallest feather elements only a few tenths of a millimeter, so even breathing too heavily could send them flying. At certain moments, I found myself almost holding my breath while placing a feather because even the beating of the heart creates tiny movements in the hands … each stage introduced a new level of difficulty. I could not work more than four hours per day on the project because it demanded such an intense level of concentration.

“It was the first time I worked with lophophore natural feathers, which are … extremely difficult to handle, and also the first time I had worked at such a microscopic scale.” Vermeulen was first exposed to featherwork during a period of time spent at Jean Paul Gaultier, and went on to study featherwork at the Lycée Octave Feuillet; he has had his own workshop since 2014.

The Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Animal Kingdom Glassoctopus

The Glassoctopus presents a sculpture of an octopus is extremely thin at just 3.5mm, and is set onto a hand-guilloché gold base. The development process took over a year, since glass sculptures are of course typically much larger, and Vacheron notes that one of the bigger challenges had to do with creating the suckers for the tentacles, each one of which is made individually; once formed, they cannot be reheated, or surface tension wold cause them to collapse.

The octopus figurine is sculpted with heated tungsten rods. Simone Crestani, the artisan who created the octopus, began working with the material at a young age, and says that this project presented unique challenges.

“In glassmaking, one usually thinks in centimeters, sometimes even in monumental volumes, whereas here everything had to be controlled to the tenth of a millimeter … this forced me to completely rethink my technique and adapt all my tools to ensure that every detail remained readable and alive within the dial’s dimensions … this project constituted a real turning point in my work because it forced me to develop a new technique that I had never used in twenty-five years of working with glass.”

The Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Animal Kingdom Oraygami

The Oraygami watch shows a group of miniature manta rays, suspended on brass stems over a deep blue enamel-over-guilloché dial. The manta rays are made of hand-colored Japanese paper, with a maximum length of 10mm and a minimum of just 5mm. The rays are folded by hand by the artisan, using just fingers and a toothpick, and the dying introduced extra difficulties as it made the paper thicker and stiffer.

Anja Midori is a relative newcomer to the field of micro-origami, but is considered one of the most innovative practitioners of the art.

“There were really two major challenges,” she says. “The first was creating the manta ray itself. In origami, artists usually work from existing folding sequences developed by other masters, but for this project, I had to invent my own model from scratch. I spent a long time studying photographs and videos of real rays to understand their proportions and the way they move through water before translating those observations into folds. Some solutions emerged only late at night or unexpectedly while away from the studio.

“The second great challenge was the paper. The blue tones available in my usual Japanese papers were not the right color for the project, so … I had to experiment with dyeing the paper myself using a mixture of water, natural cellulose, and acrylic pigment. Because the papeter is extremely thin, every color mixture changes its behavior, thickness, and flexibility, so it took a long time to find the right balance.

“This is probably the most significant project of my origami career so far. It was the first time I had been involved from the very beginning of the creative process, rather than simply executing a finished idea … Vacheron Constantin also gave me confidence because they constantly encouraged me to push further and trust my work at every stage, even when I was not sure I could accomplish my task.”

The Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Animal Kingdom Tigerbroidery

The Tigerbroidery watch has a bit of a mosaic-like quality, thanks to the technique used to make it – the artisan, Laura Baverstock, is an expert in gold embroidery, in which threads of gold are used to create an abstract or representational design. In this case the design was stitched onto a perforated titanium dial plate covered with silk and cotton, and, unusually, full 9K gold wire was used; ordinarily for gold embroidery, the artisan uses gilt wire which use a small amount of gold for color. Baverstock also used white gold wire, as well as copper wire with a black ceramic coating. The jungle background is a bit more traditional: green silk, with individually stitched green leaves.

Because actual gold alloy wire is not usually used for gold embroidery, new tools had to be made to create the wire. The eyes of the tiger use ten different shades of silk.

The dial took over two hundred hours to stitch together, including stretching the silk on its frame, cutting and shaping the gold wires, and the actual embroidering process.

“This project was, from start to finish, a venture into the unknown,” says Bavenstock. “I usually depict animal faces, but Vacheron Constantin challenged me to create the entire animal, and portray it in motion, which required extensive research using wildlife imagery and documentary footage. Vacheron Constantin also challenged me to work with wires containing the highest possible gold content, and, after various experiments, 9-karat gold proved to be a material I could successfully manipulate, although it was the first time I had worked with it.

“On top of that, I was working on a scale approximately half that of the smallest piece I had ever previously created. This required the development of bespoke tools capable of producing entirely new materials for the project, including miniature gold wires and ultra-fine needles.

“I have always loved the phrase, ‘Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.’ For me, this project perfectly embodies the balance between artistic innovation and the technical discipline of embroidery what defines my creative process.”

The Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Animal Kingdom Papercroc

The Papercrock depicts a crocodile seen from above surrounded by vegetation – this is a white-on-white study of the possibilities of paper sculpture. As with the other Tribute to the Animal Kingdom watches, the impression of a great deal of depth has to be created with very little actual vertical space; the entire paper construction is just 3mm thick. Made of cut and embossed paper, the crocodile and other elements of the dial are visually volumetric despite the space limitations.

Marianne Guély, who created the Papercroc, says, “The greatest challenge was achieving such precision and detail on paper at a microscopic scale. Cutting proved particularly difficult because natural fiber papers tend to create tiny burrs and ridges along the edges.”

“The maison [Vacheron Constantin] connected us with specialists in ultra-precise laser cutting, allowing us to achieve the level of refinement required by haute horlogerie … this project represents the fulfillment of a dream I had carried with me for many years. I have always been passionate about watchmaking and had long imagined bringing paer into this universe. When Vacheron Constantin contacted us, it felt almost like destiny.

“In Europe, paper is still often considered merely a medium and is frequently associated with fragility – notions I have always challenged in my work. This project allowed us to demonstrate that paper can enter the world of haute horlogerie as a true form of art.”

The Métiers d’Art Tribute To The Animal Kingdom Woodenwings.

The Woodenwings watch is an example of wood marquetry, which in this instance has been used to show a falcon taking flight against a background of abstract curves. The marquetry, which is an intricate inlay of a dozen different woods, and uses three distinct techniques: circular marquetry for the background, sculptured marquetry for the body (which is a layered version of traditional flat marquetry) and a third assembly technique which was developed specifically for constructing the falcon’s wings.

Marquetry from various materials, from stone, to leather, to wood and other materials, has of course been used in watchmaking before, but what stands out here are the high relief sculptured forms – most marquetry dials are essentially flat mosaics.

As with the other Tribute to the Animal Kingdom watches, the sense of depth is much greater than you’d think possible with the available space; the falcon is just three millimeters thick. Anna Le Corno, a winner of the Grand Prix de la Création de la Ville de Paris (established in 1993 to “recognize current and future creative talent in the world of design, fashion and crafts,” describes the process.

“The greatest challenge was creating volume within such a restricted space. I am accustomed to working on large furniture pieces and sculptural objects, where I enjoy large surfaces that allow me to creat relief and highlight the materials natural texture and character … On my larger pieces the grain is immediately visible and the viewers can fully immerse themselves in the materiality of the wood – something that becomes much more challenging at a smaller scale.

“To achieve this [three dimensional effect] I had to completely rethink my both my tools and my techniques. I also had to learn to work under binocular magnification.

“What fascinates me most is the dialogue with the material itself, with wood. This project allowed me to develop an even deeper understanding of it.”

The watches were presented at Homo Faber 2026, one of a series of biennial exhibitions dedicated to preserving and celebrating master craftsmanship. Homo Faber – Latin for “man the maker” is organized by the Michelangelo Foundation, which was created in 2016 by Johann Rupert, and the late Franco Cologni. Mr. Rupert is the founder and chairman of the Richemont group.

For much of the history of luxury watchmaking, the artisans responsible for making cases and dials, and whose skills were essential to the evolution of the decorative arts in watchmaking, worked more or less behind the scenes and their names were not well known. However, over the last decade, this has begun to change, and Vacheron has gone to great lengths to celebrate not just the watches, and their support of Homo Faber, but also to celebrate the artists behind the watches.

Some of the materials used for this project have been used in watchmaking before and some have not (to the best of my knowledge) but the particular emphasis for the Tribute to the Animal Kingdom watches was to use them specifically to create an impression of depth in a space which is almost flat. This goal was achieved with remarkable beauty and consistency across the six pieces – all of which are unique pieces, for obvious reasons. Equally obviously, price is by request; for more information, visit vacheronconstantin.com. Visit Homofaber.com to find out more about the project.