Just in time for fall, the American luxury jewelry house Harry Winston has released a new collection of timepieces inspired by the bold color and geometric patterns of the Art Deco period. They include the Premier Majestic Art Deco watch, which pays homage to the period in particularly interesting ways, pulling inspiration from the art, decor, and architecture of 1930s New York, when the brand was first founded.
Housed in a white-gold case with a dial that features a jazzy geometric pattern emphasized by a black-and-white color palette—comprised of black jade, mother of pearl, and tiered clusters of diamonds—the piece was additionally conceived to recall the glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Era and its celebrated icons, immortalized in black and white for the silver screen.
Photo courtesy Harry Winston.
The piece’s slivers of white mother of pearl and glossy black jade, set in the white gold case, were inlaid side by side to form a visually contrasting abstract background, in a technique known as marquetry. Above the base, on the topmost tier, a glimmering black jade stone—fashioned in an emerald cut, a nod to Harry Winston’s favorite cut for precious stones—sits center stage on the top half of the dial. Below, several brilliant round diamonds fan out around it, arranged in cut-down settings and positioned to catch the light, weaving between the mother-of-pearl cabochons interspersed throughout. The dappled, black-and-white pattern lends the piece an appearance of depth, drama, and volume.
The watch also handily references the iconic arches of the brand’s Fifth Avenue flagship through its distinctive diamond-set lugs that reimagine the shape of the store’s entrance, emphasized further by the 57 brilliant-cut diamonds on the bezel and truncated diamonds in the crown. Since its official launch in 1989, the Premier Collection has been designated specifically to explore iconic periods in art and design history through watchmaking, with an emphasis on how those periods have manifested in New York, as in this new model, which also nods to the sleek, symmetrical lines of its towering skyscrapers.
Photo courtesy Harry Winston.
The piece is also powered by a high-end Swiss mechanical automatic movement with a 72-hour power reserve and features an 18-karat white gold skeletonized rotor, a sapphire crystal case back, a flat silicone balance spring, and a black pearl alligator strap with a white-gold ardillon buckle studded with 17 brilliant-cut diamonds.