Horological Meandering

Moderator Patrick_y sheds some light on a dark material and explains what aventurine is made of. 

Aventurine dials are starting to become a thing.  In 2018 at SIHH, we saw an explosion of Aventurine when Lange, Parmigiani Fleurier, and Van Cleef & Arpels all launched timepieces with aventurine! Blue dials are a common theme on many watches, but instead of just variations on blue, watch brands need to innovate and find other "blues" to incorporate into their dials.  Hence why aventurine was identified as a dial material. 

Aventurine dials are usually deep blue in color, they’re deepness is a mystery to most people…  Simply put, the vast majority of people, including watch collectors, don’t know what “aventurine” actually is.  Simply put, aventurine is a very nice type of glass. 

“Glass?” you ask. 

Yes.  It’s glass.  It’s not natural, it’s man-made.  It’s not a stone neither.

“But I’ve seen big pebbles of aventurine at the watch company’s display booth, it must be made of  pebbles!” 

Actually, it just looks like a pebble because all the marketing props of aventurine used by watch companies are pebble shaped. 

The etymology of the word “aventurine” comes from the word “adventure” and was used to describe “adventurous glass” that came out of glass works facilities in Murano, Italie that had these strange effects.  Today, aventurine is manufactured primarily out of glass with special chemicals, micas, minerals, and metals added to the glass to create its unique “starry” texture.  They are made in large batches and are not always homogenous, so some sections of the glass can have more rich variation and some parts can be more “barren.”  Aventurine doesn’t even have to be blue, depending on the chemicals and metals added, aventurine can span a wide range of colors from red to green to purple. 

Is Aventurine worth the price? 

While worth is always in the eye of the beholder, I'd have to say it depends on the piece.  While machining aventurine into a dial is difficult and there is a large risk of breakage and cracking, the premiums being asked for aventurine is quite high.  Aventurine dial production can be scaled up if trends suddenly shifted in favor of aventurine.  There is not likely to be a major shortage of aventurine in the future as the material can be reliably man-made.  For many watch companies, aventurine costs are fairly high; the aventurine component of a single dial can cost a company hundreds of Swiss Francs.  But many brands are often charging thousands of Swiss Francs.  Furthermore, consider how much a high quality non-aventurine dial costs, and the manufacturing cost delta between an aventurine dial with printed numerals and a normal high quality dial with applied numerals or indices is rapidly reduced, yet the consumer cost delta is still very high because of the exlcusivity premium.  Keep in mind, if indices are glued onto the dial, then this is fairly easy for the dial-maker.  But if indices have little feet and the dial must be drilled, then the dial has a high risk of cracking to create the holes; that’s where an aventurine dial becomes more “worth the price.” 

I hope you found this an educational topic!  And as always, I welcome your comments below!