Blancpain’s award winning in-house Métiers d’Art studio is renowned for its mastery of a wide range of artistic crafts, including fine engraving, enameling in multiple forms such as painting, champlevé and cloisonné, along with damascening, shakud?, and more. Its latest creation brings together fine engraving, damascening and shakud? in a one-of-a-kind creation bearing the image of Ganesh.

It reprises – albeit with an entirely new interpretation – the Ganesh theme featured in the watch that won the Artistic Crafts prize in the 2015 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. This beautiful piece is exclusively available at the famed luxury watch retailer; Time Avenue, Bandra in Mumbai this Ganesh Chaturthi.

The black patina of the dial is created using the shakud? technique. Blancpain’s artisans delicately treat the surface multiple times to achieve the final subtle black shades that mark this art form which was originally developed for the decoration of swords and jewellery. Blancpain is the only watch house that has mastered this time-honored motif. The dial base presents another art form, damascening, whose application to watchmaking is also exclusive to Blancpain. The fine designs are hand-carved into the surface of the dial, following which gold is hammered into the resulting troughs. The images themselves are fine gold hand engravings that are held in place without the use of adhesives.

The watch itself is part of Blancpain’s Villeret Collection. Its 45 mm red gold case with Blancpain’s signature double-stepped bezel houses hand-wound in-house Caliber 15B. The transparent case-back showcases the movement finishing featuring finely hand-applied Côtes de Genève along with beveling and circular graining. The launch of this exceptional one-of-a-kind piece coincides with the Ganesh Festival in India, which is now recognized around the world.

Speaking at the launch, Viraal Rajan, owner, Time Avenue says, “Ganesh Chaturthi today is not just an Indian festival, but the favourite God is celebrated across the globe. This exclusive piece by Blancpain is a beautiful piece of luxury art that we are sure our consumers would like to adorn.”