The famed Swiss watch maker teams with centuries-old traditional arita-yaki potter Koransha to produce this limited line of stunning handcrafted watches.
Even if you’ve never heard the term Arita-yaki, you’ve almost certainly seen the pottery the term applies to: the gorgeous, traditional Japanese porcelain often adorned with hand-painted scenes of flora and fauna against a distinctive cobalt blue underglaze that gives the works an ethereal, washed out quality.
And, depending on your fashion consciousness and amount of disposable income, you may or may not have heard of Paul Bergen, the new school watch maker and Guinness World Record holder (apparently for “World’s Most Complicated Wristwatch”), whose watches tend to retail for several thousand USD a piece.
Regardless of if you’ve heard of either, though, you’ll surely appreciate these stunning watches that are the result of a collaboration between Bergen’s brand and one of the oldest Arita-yaki producers functioning today, Koransha Co., Ltd. Koransha has been in the business of Arita-yaki since before the style – named after the primary region of production, Arita City, Saga Prefecture – was even a thing.
Each of the gorgeous watches in the collection features a porcelain faceplate recalling some of the most common visual themes of Arita-yaki, such as phoenixes, chrysanthemums and other flora with telltale cobalt blue flourishes.
Of course, you’ll either need to be fabulously rich or just really, really want one of these to actually get one around your wrist. The asking price for one of these one-of-a-kind pieces comes up to a cool 480,000 yen (US$4,500-ish), and the watches are available only at Isetan Men’s “Paul Gerber Watch Fair” at Shinjuku Isetan.
Source: Japaaan.com
Images: Isetan Men’s/Koransha/Paul Gerber