Verre Églomisé - Miniature Painting

Reverse painting-on-glass, a uniquely difficult and skillful art. The invention of this new techniqie calls for a blend of passion and precision, patience and ingenuity. Successfully applying it to watchmaking and jewllery implies combining this expertise with keen creativity without restraining the latter. Such an alliance is based on solid foundation and a temporal dimension that is not always perceptible at first glance and which deserves to be explained in detail. This reverse painting, as églomisé is known in English, which is done here backwards on the back side of the sapphire crystal, is a unique, rare, and difficult art that is new to the horological scene.

Angular Momentum & Manu Propria’s “Furious Horse” Timepiece

What makes this particular technique so difficult is the sequence of paint application necessary to achieve it successfully. The resulting painting is actually seen in reverse from the front, so the pigments must be applied opposite to the intended effect, requiring a great deal of imagination, patience, and skill most especially when the painting involves an entire palette of colors.

à Souscription - Digital Time Display by Revolving-Disk-System

The main advantage of having a miniature painting on the reverse of the watch crystal with an aperture for digital time display is, that there are no watch hands disturbing the miniature picture. Verre Églomisé timepieces show the time digitally through an aperture, by an hour disk à “Souscription” with hour, quarter hour and 5-minute indexes and optionally with a minute disk. This method is an alternative time reading system without hour and minute hand.

Furious Horse

1.4435NcU “Staybrite” steel case, 41§.70 mm diameter “Staybrite” crown with cabochon sapphire, “Stybrite” back with a Verre Églomisé miniature painting of the Chinese Zodiac circle, the horse sign replaced by a diamond, engraved center plate.

Historical hand-winding movement Caliber FHF 72, 17 jewels, 18‘000A/h, 48 hours power reserve, screw-balance The 52.500 ct. sapphire crystal decorated with a Verre Églomisé Miniature Painting on the reverse with a round “Staybrite” aperture for digital time display by revolving hour disk à Souscription, made of solid mother of pearl.

Source: Angular Momentum