Welcome to my watch design page!
Welcome to my watch design page!
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Outside my academic work, I enjoy developing speculative watch concepts that combine mechanical constraints with visual storytelling. (Some of them have turned into real watches!)
Window of Light
Window of Light
Window of Light began with a simple question: can a mechanical watch make time visible as an atmosphere rather than merely display it as a number?
The proposed dial is constructed in three layers. The upper layer is a fixed, hand-painted enamel architectural frame. Its two apertures—a smaller sky window above and a larger scenic window below—define what the wearer can see while preserving the depth and intimacy of looking through an actual window.
The middle layer is a transparent sapphire annular disc driven continuously by the movement. Painted across the ring is a twenty-four-hour sequence of light and atmosphere: sunrise, clear daylight, golden hour, sunset, twilight, and night. There are no conventional hour numerals. Instead, the position of the sun, moon, stars, and changing color of the sky indicate the passage of time.
The lower layer is a fixed miniature-enamel landscape. The mountains, water, vegetation, and architecture remain motionless while the sapphire sky ring rotates above them. In this way, the landscape represents continuity, while the moving light represents time. The sky is not painted as a fixed background on the lower dial; it is created by the rotating second layer itself.
A central design challenge is the transition between the moving sky ring and the stationary landscape. The painted atmosphere must gradually become lighter toward the inner edge of the sapphire ring, meeting a pale horizon on the lower enamel plate without a visible white band, abrupt boundary, or unintended tint over the landscape. The dimensions of the apertures, the width of the sapphire ring, and the opacity of the painted colors therefore have to be developed as one integrated system.
This remains a conceptual design study rather than a production-ready watch. The images shown here were developed through hand sketching and iterative visual prototyping. A physical realization would require further collaboration with movement designers, dial makers, miniature-enamel painters, and sapphire specialists to resolve tolerances, transparency, color behavior, and the mechanism driving the rotating ring.
The landscape remains; the light moves. Time is not read—it is seen.
逐星 — Chasing the Stars
逐星 — Chasing the Stars
逐星 begins from a viewpoint suspended just beyond the Earth. The lower half of the dial presents the planet as a luminous curved horizon, rendered in miniature enamel with deep oceans, cloud formations, and fragments of land. Above it, the composition opens into a darker celestial field of stars, planets, nebulae, and distant light.
An arched aperture at twelve o’clock displays the time. Rather than allowing numerals or conventional hands to dominate the image, the design places the indication within the sky itself, almost like an observatory window. Time becomes one element within a much larger universe: precise and measurable, yet visually small in relation to the planetary and cosmic scene surrounding it.
The dial is organized as an upward journey. The eye moves from the detailed surface of the Earth, across its glowing horizon, and into the depth of space before arriving at the time display. This movement gives the name 逐星—literally, “pursuing the stars”—both a visual and metaphorical meaning. It refers not only to physical movement toward the cosmos, but also to curiosity, aspiration, and the human impulse to look beyond what is already known.
The color palette reinforces this transition. Saturated blues, greens, and mineral earth tones give the planet a tangible presence, while indigo, violet, black, and scattered points of light create a sense of distance above it. Fine gold accents around the aperture and within the painted details connect the terrestrial and celestial halves of the composition, adding warmth without diminishing the depth of the night sky.
At its core, 逐星 treats the watch not simply as an instrument for reading the hour, but as a small space for contemplating scale: the scale of a minute, a lifetime, a planet, and the universe beyond it.
逐星 (Chasing the Stars): a miniature-enamel dial depicting the Earth beneath a celestial landscape, with time displayed through an arched aperture at twelve o’clock.
"Glacier Alpenglow"
"Glacier Alpenglow"
Glacier Alpenglow explores the contrast between warmth and cold through a quiet mountain scene rendered in pale, layered tones. Dark, snow-covered peaks rise across the upper half of the dial, while the foreground opens into a broad expanse of glacial ice and meltwater. Above the mountains, a restrained blush of pink and lavender suggests alpenglow—the brief illumination that appears near sunrise or sunset, when distant peaks seem to hold the last or first light of the day.
The composition is intentionally spare. There are no numerals or conventional hour markers; the mountain ridges, ice fields, and subtle shifts in color provide the dial’s visual structure. The hands emerge from the center of the landscape and extend across the peaks like compass needles, allowing time to be read without interrupting the scene.
The palette moves from deep slate blue and charcoal in the mountains to soft blue, pearl white, and translucent gray across the glacier. A faint band of rose light at the horizon introduces warmth without overwhelming the coolness of the dial. This balance gives the watch its central tension: the landscape appears still and frozen, yet the light suggests a moment that is already passing.
The design is less a literal representation of a particular place than an attempt to capture an atmosphere—the clarity of high altitude, the silence of ice, and the fleeting warmth of light touching snow.
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