SJX Watches
Magnificent Marquetry: Piaget’s Andy Warhol ‘Camouflage’
The Piaget Andy Warhol ‘Camouflage’ reinterprets the artist’s late self-portraits with a marquetry dial assembled from 27 pieces of sodalite, turquoise and gold. Following last year’s Collage edition, it puts Piaget’s expertise in ornamental stones to more ambitious use, translating an easily reproduced printed motif into a painstaking exercise in stone marquetry. Initial thoughts Stone dials have become almost inescapable in recent years, but Piaget was pioneering the format as far back as the 1960s, long before mineral stones became a defining feature of flamboyant 1970s style. The Camouflage continues that legacy with a dial that is much more than a polished slice of stone. Most contemporary stone dials are uniform wafers — their appeal is largely dependent on the colour and natural pattern of the material itself. Stone marquetry takes things up a notch, demanding a deft hand to cut and combine individually shaped pieces into a deliberate composition. It’s one of Piaget’s specialities, demonstrated by last year’s Andy Warhol Collage and now put to good use reinterpreting one of the artist’s final bodies of work. Piaget’s artisans have done an admirable job translating Warhol’s vibrant Camouflage works into sodalite, turquoise and gold — there’s no hiding the craftsmanship. The irregular contours and close-fitting pieces make the expertise unusually apparent, while the contrasting textures give the dial surface more variety than colour alone ...
