Century Cloisonné "Seven Wonders"

To commission a Century, contact us at concierge@maisonceladon.com

All dial variants may be paired with either the Calibre CH1 or CH5, except those exclusive to the CH5.

The Seven Wonders dial is exclusive to the CH5.

The current waitlist period is 6-12 months, although we will endeavour to meet a specific delivery date if needed.

Each Century is made to order.

We ask for a 50% deposit on order, with the balance before delivery.

Pricing and Options

Century CH5

Cloisonné - 29,900 USD (inclusive of Breguet Overcoil and Handmade Hands)
Regulator - 29,900 USD (inclusive of Breguet Overcoil and Handmade Hands)

Century CH1

Cloisonné - 14,900 USD
Regulator - 14,900 USD

Options

Breguet Overcoil - 2000 USD
Handmade Hands with customised blueing/purpling - 2000 USD
Bespoke Dial - 3000 USD

We are able to accept payments in both USD or SGD.

The Calibre CH5 Phoenix -

For its latest collection, Celadon HH unveils its new flagship Calibre CH5, wholly designed, created and finished by AHCI master watchmaker Lin Yong Hua exclusively for Celadon HH, as was our earlier Calibre CH1.
The CH5 is conceived as the purest expression of Chinese haute horlogerie in Celadon’s inimitably artistic style, with all the trappings and flourishes of high horology finissage such as black polishing, Chinese scroll stripes, heated purple screws, gold chatons, meticulous hand-bevelling, inward and outward angles, elegantly spoked centre wheel and a breguet overcoil.
The artfully crafted bridges, balance cock and click are designed to allude to the crested head and tail feathers of the phoenix, the mythological bird that represents the Empress of China.
A planetary gear mechanism and grande sonnerie-style winding click springs further elevate the grandeur of the movement and give it greater refinement and ease in hand-winding.
True to the bespoke, artisanal nature of Celadon HH, the Calibre CH5 may be customised in finishing style according to the owner’s wishes, with any combination of rose or white gold, as well as frosted or striped bridges, possible.
Likewise, the handmade hands may be customised according to the owner’s wishes - fully heated purple, transition purpled, blued, or any combination thereof.
Our characteristic peacock tail hands are especially difficult to perfectly heat purple so uniformly because of their width - other watchmakers who offer heat purpled hands use much thinner hands which are easier to heat.

Classical Scenes of Imperial China

To pair with our new flagship Calibre CH5, Celadon HH has created a new collection of cloisonné enamel dials centred on classical scenes of Imperial China, and inspired by traditional Chinese art forms, showcasing three of China’s greatest imperial dynasties.

Century “Mandarin Duck” (representing the Tang Dynasty) -

The ageless symbol of eternal love in Chinese culture, the mandarin duck or yuanyang is believed to mate for life and is popularly used to celebrate and herald weddings in China.
Its magnificently-coloured feathers particularly suit the expressively vibrant beauty of cloisonné enamel.
The mandarin duck first became a symbol of eternal love in the Tang Dynasty, considered the zenith of Chinese culture, and its vibrant feathers echo the flamboyance and magnificence of Tang China.
Since we regularly have owners wishing to commission a watch or pair of watches to celebrate their weddings, we created this watch as a particularly apt choice for this purpose.

Century “Duo of Swallows” (representing the Song Dynasty) -

An elegant scene of bird and flower painting, a scholarly art form which has millennia of history in Imperial China and which reached its peak in the Song Dynasty.
Bird and flower paintings express the beauty and resilience of nature and hold profound cultural meaning and auspicious symbolism.

Century “Temple of Heaven” (representing the Ming Dynasty) -

An imperial sacrificial altar to Heaven which has stood for six centuries in Beijing, the Temple of Heaven was in imperial times regarded as the most important structure in all the sinosphere, representing the grandeur and power of the Celestial Empire.
It was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1998 and described as a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilisations.
The Temple of Heaven has especial significance for Celadon HH as our cloisonné enamel dials are created in its vicinity at the atelier of Grandmaster Xiong Songtao, whose family also holds an imperial link as the former court enamellers of the Emperors of China.
The background sky of the dial is additionally hand-hammered to create a more layered effect.

Century “Seven Wonders” -

The Seven Wonders stands distinct from the Classical Scenes collection, as the first dial design that is exclusively reserved for the CH5 movement.
Each wonder is depicted running clockwise, according to its geographical location, from East to West, starting with the Great Wall and ending with Chichen Itza in the centre.
The seven wonders depicted are the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Petra, the Colosseum, Christ the Redeemer, Machu Picchu, and Chichen Itza, each in a romantic evening light.
Each wonder’s borders corresponds to a shichen, or two hour mark, the traditional unit of time measurement in Imperial China.
Additionally, a gold dot is placed in the middle of each panel to mark the hour in between.
The dial is complicated in the extreme and requires only the absolute most skilled and experienced of our enamellers to create.
As our current flagship dial design, Celadon HH has entered the Century “Seven Wonders” into the most prestigious competition in watchmaking worldwide, the GPHG, for this year 2023 in the Artistic Crafts category.

About Celadon Haute Horlogerie

Celadon Haute Horlogerie (Celadon HH) was founded with the sacred mission of creating the very finest Chinese watches, and to establish a purist Chinese haute horlogerie marque of global renown, and in so doing, raise the prestige and reputation of Chinese watchmaking.
The characteristics of Celadon HH watches are original and elegant design infused with the charisma and magnificence of five thousand years of Chinese history and heritage, combined with quality of materials and craftsmanship of the highest level, and the advancement of traditional Chinese artisan crafts with centuries or even millennia of history.
As the pioneer of Chinese haute horlogerie, Celadon HH has led the way in establishing the governing tenets and characteristics that will define the high watchmaking of China in the decades and perhaps centuries to come.
Foremost among these is an overarching trait of yuanman, or “perfection and fulfilment”, communicated through roundness and curvaceousness.
In Chinese culture, yuanman connotes perfection, reunion with family and loved ones, a deep sense of satisfaction and contentedness, of abundant prosperity and fullness of riches.
This pervading aura of roundness and fullness is reflected in the elegant and gentle sweeping curves in every aspect of the Century’s design.
Whereas Swiss movements have traditionally been defined by their elaborate bridge layout, and German watchmaking by their 3/4 plate and colourful blued screws and rubies, Chinese Haute Horlogerie as pioneered and defined by Celadon HH encompasses rich colours with the rose gold 3/4 plate and chatoned rubies, roundedness and curvaceousness, and understated modesty in daring to conceal highly-finished intricate movement components.

The Celadon Century

The Century is the first watch by Celadon HH and is meant to be an excellent base upon which to build further complications and utilise various types of exceptional dials.
Handcrafted and assembled by AHCI master watchmaker Lin Yong Hua in his atelier, the surpassing quality of the Century is absolutely beyond all reproach.
Designed to be the watch that will come to define Chinese high horology.
An elegant case inspired by classical Chinese history and culture, paired with a movement exclusive to Celadon HH that is designed, created and finished by Master Lin Yong Hua (LYH).
The vision behind the Celadon Century is to create a proudly Chinese watch of the highest quality, of wholly original design inspired by five millennia of Chinese culture and history, which would be a platform to showcase the very best of Chinese artisan crafts like enamel art, the various porcelains, silk, and gemstone carving.
The movement itself would form the basis for a family of innovative complications developed down the line.
The first series of the Century will be offered with cloisonné enamel dials created by Grandmaster Xiong Songtao, third generation heir to the family of enamel artisans of the Chinese imperial court.
A regulator complication will also be offered.

Calibre CH1

The movement, exclusive to Celadon HH, is conceived and created from the ground up by AHCI master watchmaker Lin Yong Hua specifically for the Celadon Century.
It is a handwound design with optional Breguet overcoil.
The movement can be finished in either rose gold or white gold according to the client’s wishes.
The highest possible level of hand finishing is employed throughout, with perlage, bevelled countersinks, anglage on all edges, five gold chatons, and Chinese calligraphic engraving.
Circular Chinese Scroll Stripes again evoke the characteristic of yuanman.
AHCI Master Watchmaker Lin Yong Hua’s LYH signature is present on both the 3/4 plate and the centre wheel.
Naturally, even the parts that are not visible to the wearer are finished magnificently, with barrel wheels bearing a sunburst finish hidden under the mainplate and an intricately-cut centre star wheel with an extremely small LYH signature.

Case

A classically-shaped moon case, an elegant frame for the complicated dials it embodies.
The case is round and alludes to the moon and perfection and fulfilment, all of which hold significance in traditional Chinese culture.
The crown is wide and thin, and therefore both extremely comfortable to wind (especially given the manual movement) and elegantly flush with the case.
The left side of the case echoes the shape of classical Chinese arch bridges, while the side with the crown alludes to the moon gate in Chinese architecture.
Both of these architectural traits can be seen throughout China, but are most associated with the elegantly laidback Jiangnan area, comprising Suzhou and Hangzhou, the cultural heartland of China since the Song Dynasty a thousand years ago.
The two polished lines on each side form an arch under the wings that is sandblasted for contrast, with the wings satin-brushed to create a long, gracefully majestic curved case side which flows down into the two wings that form the lugs.
Specialised Shangjiang (上匠) case finishing developed by Celadon HH is applied throughout the case.
The beautifully hand-finished case, with alternating brushing and polishing in 904L steel, are inspired by the grace and majesty of Classical Chinese architecture.
The left side of the case evokes the shape of a Chinese arch bridge often seen in the grand scholarly poetry of the West Lake, with its sweeping arch emphasising the length and voluptuousness of the Century’s lugs.
The polished line above the arch sweeps in an unbroken path throughout the entire length of the case, alluding to the Chinese character for “Grandeur” or 大 in seal script, and encompassing all under heaven.
The right side of the case with the prominent crown recalls the design of the moon gates seen especially in classical Jiangnan architecture, kindling an aura of literary elegance and understated beauty reflected in the poetic majesty of Suzhou and Hangzhou.
The crown, excellently designed in its slenderness and large diameter, is both tactile and practical while blending in seamlessly with the line of the case.

Hands

The hands of the Century are completely handmade by Master Lin - formed by hand and polished to a magnificent shine by hand.
Its shape, inspired by the tail feathers of a peacock, echo the roundness of yuanman and allude to the prominence of the peacock in Chinese culture as a symbol of rank and wisdom.
Optional transition blued hands (shown on the “Peacock and Peonies” showpiece), distinctive to Celadon HH, inimitably show the artisanal nature of the heat bluing of the hands.

Cloisonné Dials

For this first series of the Century, Celadon HH presents two Cloisonné enamel dial designs, “Starry Night” by Van Gogh and “Peacock and Peonies”, to display our enamel expertise in both Western and Eastern artistic styles.
The Century Cloisonné showcases Celadon’s characteristic cloisonné enamel dials, an art form which has over 600 years of history in China. The technique of cloisonné first arrived in China from Persia in the 15th century Ming dynasty, and it was further developed and evolved independently from other enamel traditions elsewhere, flourishing with extravagant commissions by the imperial court and with many provinces forming their own distinct school of enamel technique.
The cloisonné used in the Century originates from the Beijing tradition, also known as “Jingtai Lan”, the most prestigious in all of China given its status as the imperial capital. Our dials are handcrafted in the atelier of Grandmaster Xiong Songtao, whose family have been Imperial Enamellers to the Emperors of China for many generations. Grandmaster Xiong’s technique differs from European cloisonné by his use of thinner gold wire, which requires more skill and results in a more intricate image. He has also innovated a new technique of creating cloisonné for our dials which is actually much more complex and finer than the style used in imperial times.
The Century Cloisonné premiers as a collection with two distinct dial designs, each reflecting Eastern and Western art, the latter which “Starry Night” represents. We laid before ourselves a challenge to employ Chinese enamelling techniques to depict a profoundly European painting, and created a masterpiece that Van Gogh himself would have been proud of.
The entire process of creating the cloisonné enamel dials, from laying out the image on a solid silver base and deciding the individual enamel colours, to finely laying the gold wire to form the image by hand and tweezer, and finally firing around 25 times at 900 degrees in a specialised oven, involves over 45 individual steps.
As a testament to the great skill required in creating our cloisonné dials, the gold wire used to form the cloisonné image range from 0.04 to 0.07mm in thickness, and takes an experienced artisan over 50 hours to form this intricate image by hand by carefully tweaking and laying the gold wire with a fine tweezer on the solid silver base that will become the watch dial, a canvas that is less than 30mm in diameter.
At any step of the lengthy process, firing dozens of colours each individually in the oven, the dial can be destroyed due to chance.
There is less than a 10% success rate with every enamel dial.
The beauty of cloisonné enamel is that it will never change colour even after centuries.
Also, even if they bear the same design, each enamel dial is completely unique because of the artisanal process of its creation.

Customisation Possibliites

True to the artisanal and highly customisable nature of the Century, we provide a range of finishing options for the movement.
Colour of movement plating - rose, yellow or white gold
Scope and design of movement finishing
Bespoke engraving on movement
Bespoke cloisonné dial design
Handmade Breguet Overcoil
Handmade hands, either fully blued, white gold-plated or transition blued
Bespoke hand-stitched strap

Technical Details

45 hours power reserve
18000 vph
Case diameter 42mm
Case height 11.5mm
Lug to lug 47.4mm
Lug width 22mm

Contact Info

The Century is available exclusively from Celadon HH directly.
To discover more, email concierge@maisonceladon.com

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