The Metiers d’Art, such as enamel dials, are some of the most demanding parts of watch creation. While there is a huge amount of maths and engineering that goes into a watch movement, you more or less know what the outcome will be based on your calculations. An enamel dial is more akin to alchemy where you need to get the pigments correct, thickness of application, layering, gradients and then hope that it doesn’t crack during the firing process. Czapek have made things even more complex by creating a watch with an enamel dial that uses the exceptionally rare plinque-á-jour technique, fittingly called the Czapek Plique-á-Jour.
Getting straight into it, plinque-á-jour, which translates to ‘letting in the daylight’ is a method of enamel production where instead of creating one large piece of enamel on top of a dial plate, lots of small pieces of enamel are self-supporting inside a metal framework. The effect of which is that without a backing you can appreciate the translucent nature of enamel, revealing the movement below the dial. Academically it’s possible to understand that enamel is produced using glass powder and has properties similar to glass, but actually seeing it presented in this way, like a stained glass window, really drives that fact home.
There are very few workshops in the world capable of producing plinque-á-jour for good reason. It’s immensely difficult. Not only do you have to produce the precise metal framework, but each section needs to be individually filled with enamel in the correct hues in order to create the shifting blue-green gradient seen here, which Czapek are calling Polar Blue. You’re essentially making in the region of 60+ separate enamel dials to create a single dial. The margin for error is insane.
Since the dial is such a clear focus for this watch, Czapek have kept the rest of the design relatively tame. It’s the standard Antarctique case as we know it with integrated bracelet design and 40.5mm steel case. It also houses the SXH7 skeletonised automatic movement with 60-hour power reserve.
The Czapek Antarctique Plique-á-Jour is a limited edition of 10 pieces in honour of the 10th anniversary since the relaunch of the Czapek brand. It also makes sense because producing more than 10 watches with a dial like this would be madness for any workshop. It’s priced at CHF 61,200 (approx. £57,300). That is almost triple the price of the standard Antarctique but between the skeletonised movement and that insane, worldclass enamel dial, yeah, I understand why. We also tried our hands at designing an enamel watch alongside Isotope for the Mercury Vitreous.
Price and Specs:
More details at Czapek.
I’m not generally a lover of integrated bracelet watches, but I do have to say that this watch looks amazing in terms of the case and links, they score top marks from me on that front, but, the dial is way too fussy and difficult to read, the hands blend into the background “noise” of the jigsaw puzzle like feature, for me, a more simplistic crackle glaze enameled dial would have been enough and improved the legibility. The cost, as always with this brand is way out of the reach of us mere mortals, so I guess this has to be justified in terms of showing the internals and hard to achieve detail.