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Micro-painting image

Micro-painting

Micro-painting – also called miniature painting – is a unique artform. As its name suggest, its inherent difficulty lies in the scale of the canvas, often reduced to the tenth of a millimeter. Thanks to a palette of ultra-thin paintbrushes, composed of a single hair for the thinnest, the artist completes the drawing with great finesse after having defined its contours. Multiple layers of paint are necessary to obtain a perfect result, as well as an adequate drying step to set the colour. Through a motif, a text or a specifically-chosen hue, we offer our clients the possibility to personalize the micro-painted drawing featured on their timepieces, giving birth to their very own and unique timepiece.

World map from

1791

 

The Planetarium Tri-axial showcases a hand-painted terrestrial globe, whose map illustrates the world as it was in 1791, our foundation year. Its moon phase complication possesses a micro-painted disc as well, inspired by the illustration of the terrestrial globe.

Hours of work

14

 

The celestial and terrestrial globes of the Cosmos Infinity Edition require 14 hours of micro-painting work in total. Working on their round surfaces poses an additional challenge, mainly in terms of the alignment and refinement of the painted imagery which is drawn freehand, without visual cues through a binocular magnifier.​ Once the painstaking work is complete, however, the resulting constellations of the zodiac and continents in pink gold paint stand out beautifully against the glossy black onyx globes.

Single hair

1

 

The thinest paintbrush used to complete a drawing with the micro-painting technique is made of one single hair. Composed of natural hairs, the paintbrushes are usually slightly thicker (5 to 10 hairs) in order to absorb enough paint to execute sharp lines.