High jewelery bracelets with built-in clock: the de Grisogono Cascata collection ♦ ︎
They are not watches. Or, more precisely, they are clocks that are indifferent to time. Ok, the technical data indicate that inside there also seems to be a quartz movement that ensures a Swiss precision. But who will wear the three copies of the Cascata collection by the Maison de Genève de Grisogono to see what time it is? These timepiece jewels guarantee more a pleasant aesthetic sensation than an interest in punctuality. They are also jewels full of secrets.
Inside these watch-bracelets there is a golden wire structure studded with precious stones which is at the base of the watch’s silhouette.
That’s why the collection has this name: Cascata. Small jewels studded with 126 brilliant cut diamonds support the 72 oval cut gemstones of a bezel. The claws dominate and punctuate a cascade of stones for a total of over 30 carats, creating a continuum in scale that defines the contours of the oval shape of the watch and reveals the dial encrusted with 148 gems set in snow. The strap is in galuchat.
In short, high jewelry or high watchmaking? To guarantee the most dense setting and to make the gems appear in an inseparable succession, the Maison de Grisogono explains the goldsmiths craftsmen took almost a hundred hours to cut the stones in an oval shape.
I could spend hours simply observing the choreography of the hands, the harmonious dance of the fingers that unite and give life to the materials.
Fawaz Gruosi
The set griffe, the embellished dial with the snow-set and the sculpted caseback with diamond volutes required a 50-hour work for the oval cut stones and 20 hours for the claws and the snow-set of the case back and the scrolls. The bracelet with minutes and seconds is offered in three versions: white gold and white diamonds, white gold with emeralds on top and white diamonds below, pink gold with amethysts on top and rubies underneath. The buckle has new aesthetic lines specially designed to match the philosophy of the Cascata watch: in the center is a rosette cut gem of over one carat framed by a pavé.
