Birds of a Feather
Credor’s new watch is the Goldfeather Tourbillon, a veritable work of art that combines an in-house tourbillon with an astounding level of handcrafted art from various Japanese disciplines on both the dial and movement.
The dial is coated in inky black urushi lacquer, which has been used in Japan for thousands of years — including on some Seiko Presage watches — but that’s just the start of the artistry. A lone urushi artisan named Isshu Tamura constructs the dial using three additional classic Japanese crafts: raden, kirikane and maki-e.
Raden involves placing differently colored pieces of mother-of-pearl into the lacquer, while kirikane is a similar process but with fine lines of gold plate instead of mother-of-pearl.
Tamura used both processes to create a multicolored flock of birds flying from the exposed tourbillon at 9:00 — which itself resembles a flying bird — to the Credor logo at 12:00. Maki-e, the process of sprinkling gold dust into the lacquer, can be seen surrounding the tourbillon for an ethereal effect.
As striking as the dial is, the caseback may be even more impressive. A sapphire caseback reveals the new Credor Cal. 6850, a manual-wind tourbillon movement with 60 hours of power that is hand-assembled by master watchmaker Katsuo Saito. Mechanical mastery aside, the movement features some impressive and unique decoration.
