Cartier

SJX
[Purist]
8540

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The art of miniature mosaic

Of the six Metier d’Art models unveiled at SIHH 2011, the most costly and limited (10 pieces only compared to 40 to 80 pieces for the other models) was the Rotonde de Cartier with turtle motif in stone mosaic. At a glance this doesn’t seem like much, but up close it is an extraordinary piece of work.

The dial is made by Oliver Vaucher SA, a Geneva based maker of artisan dials in enamel, engraving and semiprecious stone. Besides Cartier its other clients include two other firms known for their artisan dials, Vacheron Constantin and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Historically mosaics were large works composed of tiny pieces. In this case it’s a tiny work composed of tiny pieces – each square piece is about 0.7 mm and only 0.4 mm thick.

The squares are cut by a machine that engraves a network of parallel lines in each direction, resulting in a piece of stone that looks like a miniscule bar of chocolate. Each piece of the chocolate bar is then broken off with a stiff pair of tweezers. Cutting the squares individually would result in thousands of tiny bits that would be impossible to manage.

But not all the pieces of the mosaic are square. Some are triangular or curved. These have to be cut with a tiny circular saw from the square tiles.

Before the squares can be cut, however, the stone needs to be selected. It has to be the right colour, suitable for the design provided by Cartier. Specifically the stone has to be the right colour and translucency after it has been polished down to the 0.4 mm thickness required for the dial, as those qualities change as the stone is thinned down.

Because of the thinness required the stones used have to be of a certain density, otherwise they are too fragile after polishing. This calls for a substantial trial and error, with lots of broken stone along the way. Finally the stones used in this dial are onyx, tiger's eye, falcon's eye, yellow pietersite, carnelian, yellow jasper, palm jasper, Kalahari jasper, yellow agate, moss agate, coral and mother-of-pearl.

Once all the stones are cut, they are positioned on the design, one by one, with a finer pair of tweezers than the one used to break off the stone squares. 1167 pieces of stone have to positioned and that takes about 60 hours.

Once that is successful, the stones are fixed in place with adhesive and then the gaps in between are filled with cement. The result is a smooth, tiled surface. But because the pieces are so tiny, the tiles are not actually visible from a distance.

- SJX

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