A Shared Purpose
What if a watch could create value far beyond the wrist?
What if fine watchmaking could help protect the environment, encourage a more circular use of resources and create new opportunities through inclusion? What if the beauty of an object could also lie in the positive impact created along the way?
Three actors, one project, one ambition: to create lasting value for people, communities and the environment.
A Story Born In Tanzani
Elewana’s lodges and camps sit among some of East Africa’s most remarkable natural environments, where protecting the ecosystems around them is essential. Tourism inevitably leaves something behind, even something as simple as an empty bottle, yet in protected places such as Ngorongoro, nothing can simply be left there. Everything has to come back out. Through Shanga, some of that glass begins a new cycle: bottles from Elewana’s properties are collected, melted and shaped by hand into tableware, jewellery, vases and other objects, some returning to lodges and hotels across the region, others leaving with travellers as souvenirs. What tourism leaves behind becomes useful again, creating a virtuous circle between hospitality, recycling and local craftsmanship.
Karim Wissanji, CEO of Elewana Collection, had followed Sartory Billard’s work for years as both a client and a collector. He knew Armand’s appetite for unusual materials and saw in Shanga’s recycled glass the kind of challenge that could push his watchmaking into new territory. For Karim, Armand was the one to take it on: could this handcrafted glass be transformed into a fine watch dial?
That question brought Sartory Billard and Shanga together. The next challenge was to find out how to make it possible.
From Glass to Dial
In Arusha, the idea became something tangible. Shanga’s master glassmakers had already explored dozens of colours, textures and compositions when Armand joined them for a week in the workshop. There, he discovered a craft that left a lasting impression on him: intense, physical work around the heat of the furnace, where colour and movement are shaped directly by hand.
Together, they continued experimenting. Recycled glass was melted, coloured with cobalt oxides, folded and blended by hand until they reached the deep blue they were looking for. Within it, swirls and gradients formed naturally, giving every piece its own character. This was precisely what made the glass beautiful, and what made the next step so difficult.
The challenge now was to preserve all of that character on the scale of a watch dial. For this delicate work, the glass travelled to Germany and Groh & Ripp, specialists in stone and hard-material watch dials. Their precision made it possible to cut and shape each dial without erasing what had been created by hand in Arusha. The finished dials then travelled to Sartory Billard’s workshop in France, where Armand assembles each one into the watch.
Where Talent Takes Shape
Shanga was created around people who are too often defined by their disabilities before anything else. In the communities around Shanga, where traditional beliefs about disability can lead to discrimination and social exclusion, the workshop offers a very different path: a place to learn, work, earn a living and be valued for what you can do rather than what you cannot. Today, more than 70 artisans work there across glass, textiles and jewellery, around 60% of them living with disabilities.
That opportunity can become real expertise. Glassmaking skills were first developed with knowledge brought to Shanga from Murano, one of the world’s great centres of glassmaking. For several years, renowned French glass artist Emmanuel Babled has also worked alongside Shanga as a mentor and technical advisor. With more than twenty years of experience in glassmaking, he has helped train the team and develop both their technical mastery and creative abilities.
Today, that knowledge lives within Shanga itself. Its glass team counts seven artisans, led by master glassblowers Charles Kyalo Mulonzi and Simon Wahome Wanjohi. Among them, Erick Mwashibanda is one of the very few glassblowers to have completed his entire training in Tanzania, and now dreams of passing that knowledge on to the next generation.
Their place in this watch has nothing to do with charity. It was earned through their craft. The glass at its heart was made by artisans whose work is now entering the demanding world of fine watchmaking.
A Design of Many Hands
Once the glass dial had taken shape, the next step was to design the rest of the watch around it.
During his stay in Arusha, a region where Maasai culture has deep roots, Armand was given a traditional spear. For a warrior, it is traditionally one of his most precious possessions. Carried to protect the cattle and the community, it is closely tied to the warrior’s role and identity. Its long, elegant profile inspired a new set of hands, designed specifically for the SB04-E Shanga.
The numerals tell another part of the story. Rather than creating a new typeface, the people who shaped the project contributed their own handwriting. Nabila Wissanji, CEO of the Land & Life Foundation, and Karim Wissanji shared the 12. Armand wrote the 11, Sartory Billard designer and project manager Tiffany Bachelet the 10, Sandra Ripp of Groh & Ripp the 6, and Shanga Master Glass Blower Charles Kyalo Mulonzi the 1. The remaining numerals were drawn by the rest of Shanga’s glass team. Together, their handwriting forms a collective signature around the dial.
Turn the watch over and Shanga appears once more. Its logo is engraved on the caseback alongside the words “Be kind · Recycle”, one of the workshop’s mottos.
Lasting Impact
From the beginning, this project was meant to create as much value for Shanga as possible. The funds it generates will return to the workshop, with a clear purpose: to help Shanga grow in size, resources and training capacity. A bigger workshop, with more equipment and greater capacity, means being able to bring more people into the team, create new jobs and train more artisans. It gives Shanga the means not only to continue what it is doing today, but to do it on a greater scale and reach people it does not yet have the capacity to welcome.
And perhaps that is where the most beautiful part of this project lies: each person who chooses this watch will help Shanga write the next chapter of its story.
