Swiss luxury watch brand Greubel Forsey has teamed up with British micro-sculptor artist Willard Wigan to create high-end watch Art Piece 1. Greubel Forsey will release a limited edition of this watches, that containing microscopic sculptures fitted on a rotating hemispherical structure. Naturally sculptures are visible only through microscope, so Greubel Forsey has developed an optical lens small enough to be fitted into the crown of the watch through which the sculpture can be seen when it is held up to the eye facing sideways.
Only one or two of Greubel Forsey Art Piece 1 will be produced every year, which will be numerically numbered, with an estimated price tag in the range of 5 million Swiss francs, or $5.4 million at current exchange.
“I feel very honored because [the people who buy this watch] will have a museum on their wrist with my work in there,” said Wigan. “Doing the work is very painstaking. It’s a nightmare doing it, but it’s a dream when you finish.”
Willard Wigan works with scalpel and a microscope and uses unusual materials, like grains of sand, spider web, legs of flies, gold and Kevlar. His creations take a lot of time and he is among the only people in the world who can do what he does. Working at this extreme nano level necessitates extreme concentration and requires a rigorous physical discipline. To create his art Wigan controls and slows his breath to enter into a kind of trance that allows him to sculpt between beats of his heart. In 2007, Wigan received an MBE from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II for his services to art.
