These Dazzling New Watches Capture the Beauty of Underwater Life
Above: The Breguet Marine Haute Joaillerie 9509 Poseidonia watch in (from left) the emerald, sapphire, and ruby versions, prices upon request.
Beginning in the 15th century in France, marquetry, or the art of inlaying thin pieces of wood or metal into an intricate design, became a winning decorative approach in furniture. Later, in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was popularized by the renowned French cabinetmaker André-Charles Boulle to such an extent that the term boulle work was often used to describe its elegant effect. However, marquetry isn’t the exclusive purview of beautiful decor, as evidenced by Breguet’s use of the technique in its new collection of Marine Haute Joaillerie 9509 Poseidonia watches. Inspired by the undulating silhouette of Posidonia oceanica, a variety of seagrass common to the Mediterranean Sea, artisans created painstaking dials that combine inlaid Tahitian mother-of-pearl backdrops with invisibly set baguette-cut precious stones (85 stones, to be exact) that evoke the plant’s flowing strands. The Marine Haute Joaillerie watches are available in a diamond version, as well as in three colorful variations that show off the dazzling beauty of sapphires, emeralds, and rubies (shown above). In each instance, the lines of the stones on the dial are continued in baguette diamonds across the white-gold strap buckle, as though the plant’s wavering form, much like time itself, can hardly be contained by the watch’s case.
This story originally appeared in the September 2020 issue of ELLE Decor. SUBSCRIBE
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