Six Extraordinary Tributes to the Art of Craftsmanship

Homo Faber: A Celebration of the Human Hand

Cynical types might look for a catch when a luxury goods giant announces plans to stage a major event purely to perpetuate art, hand craftsmanship and the love of beautifully made objects.

But when Richemont chairman Johann Rupert founded Homo Faber in 2018 having been inspired by the closure of a 90-year-old Milanese cutlery business, his singular aim was not to seek commercial gain but to remind the world of the importance of ‘man the maker’ .

Originally intended as a one-off , Homo Faber proved so successful that it became biennial two years later,  and the edition opening on Tuesday (September 1) will be the fourth of the alternate year format.

Once described as ‘intelligent and profound’, the month-long show (until September 30) takes place at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Girgio Maggiore in the Venice lagoon.

It will feature 500 artisans and more than 700 objects created by makers from 70 countries, with the exhibition area being divided into 15 specially illuminated installations created by artistic director Es Devlin to evoke ‘islands of talent’.

Among the artisans will be historic watch maker Vacheron Constantin, which has exhibited at every Homo Faber since the beginning – not least thanks to collector, philanthropist and former Richemont executive Franco Cologni .

As well as being instrumental in the establishment of Homo Faber, Cologni was Vacheron’s chairman from 2000 – 2005 and authored ‘Artistes du Temps’, then the definitive book about the maker .

For this year’s event the house, already famed for its metiers ‘d’art pieces, has chosen to exhibit six concept watches based on its ‘One of Not Many’ strapline, each one exquisitely decorated by individuals whose usual field of work has nothing to do with watch making.

Each was given a 42mm watch fitted with a Calibre 2460 G4 movement, the peripheral  time and date display of which  leaves the dial free to serve as a ‘blank canvas’ onto which the six could create ‘tributes to animals’  using their special skills in gold embroidery, feather work, wood marquetry, glass sculpture, paper sculpture and micro origami.

Apart from the case and movement, the only things the finished watches have in common are their 22 carat gold oscillating weights which are engraved with images depicting the tools of the artisans’ trades. Each watch also gets its own, dedicated strap embossed with motifs relevant to the dial design.

Vacheron Constantin has granted World Tempus a sneak preview of the six models, each of which is intended to highlight the brand’s dedication to ‘the art of time’ – and how its philosophy chimes exactly with Homo Faber’s mission to keep all forms of craftsmanship alive.

FEATHERSNAKE by Julien Vermeulen

Julien Vermeulen discovered a love for creating with feathers while working with celebrated fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier.

Vermeulen studied feather art at the Lycee Octave in France and founded his own studio  in 2014, from where he created ‘Feathersnake’ , a watch decorated with an imaginery, gold-eyed serpent set on a fantasy background .

With a mere three millimetres of height to work with, Vermeulen made a framework of metal applique with which to support the rare Iophopore feathers from a Himalayan Monal pheasant.

Just seven feathers were available, from which 200 minute pieces were extracted  (some less than one tenth of a millimetre in size) and applied to silk paper in order to form the body of the serpent which, thanks to the natural iridescence and changing shades of the feathers, actually appears to be  moving.

The foliage surrounding the serpent and the background landscape were created using goose feathers, with the 250-hour project necessitating a special ‘micro scalpel’ to be made from a reshaped sewing needle.

GLASSOCTOPUS by Simone Crestani

Italian glass artist Simone Crestani is well used to creating tiny details to enhance his sculptural objects based on the plant and animal worlds – but this was the first time he had been asked to produce an entire work on such a microscopic scale, a task he says demanded the learning of new skills and techniques he had never previously encountered in his 25-year career.

As the name of the watch suggests, Glassoctopus depicts a miniature, see-through octopus drifting through the dark of an imaginary sub-aquatic world.

The watery background comprises a guilloche gold base coated in a deep blue hue, over which the beautifully crafted sea creature was set having been sculpted using glass melted from minuscule rods before being shaped with similarly tiny tungsten tools.

Each tentacle and sucker had to be individually formed as heating the fine threads more than once would cause them to collapse, with the project being made all the more difficult by the choice of transparent glass which introduces  problems of refraction, magnification and visual distortion.

Crestani spent a year developing the sculpture and produced numerous prototypes before narrowing them down to a batch of four, from which the final version was chosen.

ORAYGAMI by Anja Midori

It’s remarkable enough to discover that German-based origami artist Anja Midori has been practicing the ancient Japanese art of paper folding for less than a decade – but more remarkable, still, to think that the shoal of manta rays depicted on this dial are, indeed, made from paper.

As with Glassoctopus, Vacheron Constantin’s master engravers created the deep sea environment using hand guilloche decoration topped with a deep blue hue onto which the manta rays were laid.

Varying in length from as little as five millimetres to no more than 10, each was mounted onto a tin brass stem having been folded from hand-coloured Japanese paper specifically dyed for the project  - the result being the illusion that the rays are, indeed, floating effortlessly in the water.

Midori spent two years developing the scene and countless hours crafting the rays from 20-gram paper sheets measuring no more than 12mm across which she folded - using  techniques she invented for the project  - with a combination of her finger ends, nails and the tip of a toothpick.

TIGERBROIDERY by Laura Baverstock

UK-based Laura Baverstock is a member of the Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers, one of those arcane English guilds that keep ancient skills alive.

She regularly creates animal images using embroidery, often for film and fashion use – but Vacheron Constantin’s remit required her to produce an image half the size of anything she had previously produced.

The need to depict a creature in motion was also a first for her, necessitating extensive study of still photographs and film footage in order to produce a realistic sense of movement.

And there’s no doubting her success in doing so – the tiger’s head she embroidered using wires made from nine carat white and yellow gold truly appears to be emerging from the depths of the jungle.

The big cat’s distinctive stripes were created with specially-developed ceramic-coated , black wires laid over copper while the landscape was embroidered onto green silk specifically dyed for the project by its British manufacturer.

Every blade of grass was individually stitched in multiple shades of Japanese silk, with the silk base on which the scene was created being stitched onto a perforated  titanium dial plate bespoke-made by Vacheron Constantin and layered with silk and cotton.

In total, the dial took 210 hours to create….

PAPERCROC by Marianne Guely

Paris-based Marianne Guely  uses a range of techniques including embossing, folding, layering and laser-cutting to make her paper sculptures, which range in size from monumental to table-top.

Never before, however, has she been required to create a paper sculpture on the microscopic scale demanded by Vacheron Constantin.

But, as a lover of horology already, Guely was more than happy to rise to the challenge which she describes as being ‘almost like destiny’  because she has long dreamed of applying her art to watch making.

Her exquisite white crocodile appears to be prowling through the snowy landscape of the watch dial, its form created from individual parts embossed and cut from cotton paper before being meticulously hand-assembled.

Due to the tiny size of the sculpture, Guely needed to create a range of bespoke tools – including a set of brass matrices engraved with the animals scales and the forms of the surrounding foliage which she then heated to 70C and pressed onto the paper at high pressure.

The technique resulted in the relief, volume, shadow  and detail that makes the image so realistic, with the crocodile apparently nestling between the dial’s time and date apertures.

WOODENWINGS by Anna le Corno

Although trained as an architect, Anna le Corno became a master of marquetry after studying woodwork at the prestigious Ecole Boulle in Paris and now creates everything from furniture to decorative objects and sculpture, all featuring marquetry.

She has interpreted Vacheron Constantin’s ‘Tribute to Animals’ brief through this remarkable design of a falcon, for which she used  a dozen different species of wood. Each was carefully chosen on the basis of how it would react with age, temperature and light over time, as well as with a view to the appearance of the individual grains, textures and colours.

Sculpting and carving have been used to depict the textures and layerings of the falcon’s  plumage and to give the impression that it is poised to take flight from the dial, which is further decorated with an abstract background created using ‘circular’ marquetry.  

Multiple, layered  veneers make up the bird’s body which was shaped using specially made sanding tools,  ‘micro chisels’ and tiny, carbide cutting bits sourced from Japan.

The wing alone , which is just three millimetres high, was assembled feather-by-feather, with much of the work being done through binocular magnification - watch making style.