Louis Erard Explore Wrist-Mounted Wood Working with the Excellence Marqueterie

Louis Erard love the challenge of taking the advanced techniques of metiers d’art and finding a way to achieve them in a way that makes the watches accessible to a wider audience. Across the last two years they’ve focussed on intricate hand guilloche with the Excellence Main and Excellence Main II. However, for 2023 they’re exploring an alternative artistic skill, that of marquetry, with the launch of the Louis Erard Excellence Marqueterie.

Marquetry is the practice of creating decorative wood engravings by bringing shaped wooden pieces together like an advanced jigsaw to create an image that’s greater than the sum of its parts. For the Excellence Marqueterie, Louis Erard have turned to master artisan Bastien Chevalier who hand produced all 99 dials for the limited edition.

Each dial features a motif that riffs on the Excellence Main’s geometric shapes, although now there’s a gulf interrupting the pattern. I described the Excellence Main as MC Escher-esque and the same is true of this piece, potentially to an even greater degree now that there’s a disquieting void occupying a portion of the dial. In order to create the pattern Bastien has used two types of wood stained in four different colours: tulip tree in three shades of blue for the geometric portions and willow burl in grey for the gap. There are 70 total wooden components that comprise the display.

Beneath the wooden surface and metallic base of the dial is housed the Sellita SW261-1 elaboré grade automatic calibre. It has an open work rotor with black lacquer Louis Erard logo and high quality finishing. Although, with a 38-hour power reserve it still suffers from some of the classic drawbacks of accessible movements.

However that does little to detract from Louis Erard’s impressive execution of the dial that takes a natural material and renders it into a geometric form with exacting precision. It’s also the first timepiece that uses marquetry to be available for less than CHF 4,000 at a price of CHF 3,900. So, in the endeavour to make metiers d’art more accessible, Louis Erard have undoubtedly succeeded.