Timepieces with colored stone dials were abundant at the 2025 Watches and Wonders show.
Whether surrounded by diamonds, time-only or complicated pieces, a kaleidoscope of minerals was on full display at this year’s Watches & Wonders show in Geneva. Brands flexing their color muscles included H. Moser & Cie., Zenith, Chopard, Rolex and Piaget. While hewing stone for practical and decorative purposes goes back millennia, the stone dial is a relatively new phenomenon in watchmaking.
Cutting a stone into a perfect circle (or another shape) less than 2mm thick, and then polishing and drilling it, is a delicate and painstaking task. Even the most skilled cutters and polishers will likely fracture more stones than not during the labor-intensive process. The combination of thinner watch movements and advanced cutting technologies has made the use of colored stone dials a viable option for luxury brands.
Modern Art
Andy Warhol was great friends with Yves Piaget, the brand’s president and a member of the fourth generation of the family-founded firm. The two first met in 1979, and Warhol already owned several Piaget watches. Piaget officially named its new Andy Warhol watch collection under license from and in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This version of the watch, with its iridescent opal dial, certainly would have appealed to the late, great artist.
Green With Envy
Richly veined green malachite graces the dial of a new Heure du Diamont watch by Chopard. The watch features an 18K rose gold bezel set with more than 7 carats of diamonds, with a matching vibrant green strap. An in-house self-winding mechanical movement powers this jewel of a watch.
Avant Pop
Green, orange, pink, yellow and blue-hued stone dials abounded in H. Moser & Cie.’s new Endeavour Pop collection. And pop they did: The vibrant shades of Burmese jade, coral, pink opal and lemon yellow chrysoprase were a feast for the eyes, offering an eye-catching background for the watches. The collection includes limited-edition time-only small-seconds watches (28 pieces in each color combination), tourbillons (eight pieces in each color combination) and minute repeaters, with just one watch per color version.
A Play of Light and Colors
While it is not a limited edition, Rolex’s new Oyster Perpetual GMT-Master II with a tiger iron dial will likely be hard to come by. First discovered in Western Australia, tiger iron is a combination of three stones: tiger’s eye, jasper and hematite, creating color bands that emanate a mesmerizing play of light and colors. Because no two pieces of tiger iron are exactly alike, each of the new GMT-Master II’s dials will be unique.
True Blue
As part of its 160th-anniversary new watch releases, Zenith’s new G.F.J. timepiece’s name pays homage to the brand’s founder, Georges Favre-Jacot, who established his watchmaking business in 1865 with the goal of creating the most reliable and precise timepiece ever made. In addition to honoring the founder, the new G.F.J. is equipped with a new version of the brand’s legendary calibre 135 movement, which was produced from 1949 to 1962 and won a record 235 chronometry prizes, a world record that stands to this day. The G.F.J.’s dial is crafted of deep blue lapis lazuli with a mother-of-pearl seconds subdial.
