You might have noticed that Tiffany & Co.’s Singapore flagship location has been closed for a while now. A temporary boutique (designed, naturally, like a diamond) was opened last year at the atrium of the mall, and this year the jeweller reopened the first floor of its boutique proper. The rest of the revamped store—with a new design direction that takes its cues from the house’s New York Landmark—is set to be unveiled in July this year, with two more floors to come—making this the first Tiffany & Co. triplex boutique in Southeast Asia.
To mark the upcoming reopening, the house has announced a new watch that will debut exclusively in Singapore: a special Sixteen Stone timepiece set with rubies and diamonds. The red of these rubies is, of course, no coincidence, and a knowing nod to the city’s nickname as a Little Red Dot.
This timepiece is part of Tiffany’s new chapter of watchmaking, a heritage that the jeweller recently revived and and reinvigorated. Instead of jostling in the well-established field of technical horology, Tiffany & Co. is leaning into its strengths and identity and crafting jewel timepieces inspired by the high jewellery style book of Jean Schlumberger.
The Sixteen Stone design, for instance, is clearly drawn from the famous Schlumberger ring. Originally released in 1959, the Sixteen Stone features yellow gold cross-stitches punctuating lines of gemstones—a nod to Schlumberger’s background as the scion of an Alsatian textiles family.
As a watch, the Sixteen Stone’s case is crafted in white gold and snow-set with 366 diamonds of different sizes, for a total of 2.9 carats. It’s a seamless, complicated way of working with diamonds, and one that puts on display the house’s gem-setting mastery.
The dial is crafted in two parts: a fixed central disc in mother-of-pearl, and a free-spinning rotating Sixteen Stone ring. The ring is a complex piece of artistry, calling for 25 hours of work to cast and mount the gold cross stitches, and to set the diamonds and rubies.
And because the best jewels always hide some secrets, the reverse of this Sixteen Stone watch too holds some secrets. The caseback is engraved with a sunburst design inspired by Schlumberger’s Floral Arrows brooch and decorated with a sprinkling of diamonds. You might notice, too, that this is a watch with no winding crown—it’s a considered decision by the house to distil and remove elements that might disrupt its snow-set diamond surfaces. Instead, the time is set from the caseback using a special included tool crafted in white gold and topped with an aquamarine cabochon. A creation rather special, indeed, to mark an exciting moment to come.
