Once upon a time, stone dials were very exclusive due to the difficulty in machining the precious materials to appropriately thin proportions. It meant you could mostly find them in watches from high end brands like Rolex and Bulgari. Now though, times have changed and even independent brands like Christopher Ward can produce attractive stone dial watches. As seen by the unveiling of the C63 Sealander Stones Limited Edition. There are four watches in the series, each limited to 150 pieces.
Jumping straight to the dials, the four stones you can pick from are malachite, tiger’s eye, charoite and turquoise. We talked about malachite and tiger’s eye recently with the launch of the Nivada Grenchen F77 Stone Dials so let’s focus a little more on the other two options.
Charoite is a rare gemstone that only occurs naturally in one place on Earth, the Siberia region of Russia. It stands out for its distinctive lavender colour and almost cloudy, swirling textures. Very different to the veiny, quartz appearance of other purple stones like amethyst. It makes for a very delicate appearance for the dial that plays into the dressy aesthetic of the piece. While it’s still housed in a lightcatcher case, it’s quite petite at 36mm and they’ve opted for non-lumed applied hour markers – though the hands remained lumed so that you can at least read it in the dark.
In comparison to charoite, turquoise is a stone that a lot more people will be familiar with but that doesn’t see as much use in the watch industry as other stones like the malachite and tiger’s eye. It has an intense blue colour that can sometimes lean towards green depending on the stone. You can also see the flecks and impurities that mark it as being stone rather than simply another sky-blue dial. You get the impression that if you swapped the silver of the hands and case to gold it would look like a Mesoamerican relic.
Powering all four watches in the series is the Sellita SW200-1 automatic movement with 38-hour power reserve. As bizarre as it sounds, I look forward to the day Christopher Ward runs out of their current stock of movements so that they can start using the upgraded versions with improved power reserves. The 41-hour version has been around for a few years now and the 38 is feeling increasing outdated. But again, that’s more a symptom of bulk buying movements in order to make them more accessible to customers rather than a conscious choice to use a worse movement on CW’s part, so it’s always a trade-off.
That accessibility does come through nicely though as they are priced at £795 on leather strap, £950 on three-link Bader bracelet or £985 on 5-link Consort bracelet. It’s actually one of the CW models I’d seriously consider the Consort bracelet on because it leans into the collection’s dressy appeal, though you can’t go wrong with leather either. Considering that a few years ago stone dials were mostly found on Rolexes and Bulgaris, the stone revolution has been thorough to say the least.
Price and Specs:
More details at Christopher Ward.
