Why these ten stones

Ten pieces means ten decisions, and the dials were the first. The criteria were written down before the list was: the stone had to have a real history on watch dials, cut by houses that answer for their work; it had to survive being sliced toward half a millimetre, at least in careful hands; the set had to cover a real range, from meteorite grey to opal fire, so no two owners hold the same idea; and every stone had to carry a story we could publish with sources, not gemstone-shop mysticism.

Some stones failed those tests honourably. Jade has the pedigree but felt like another house’s signature. Aventurine’s most famous sparkle belongs to a manmade glass, and we did not want to spend the rest of the edition explaining the difference. Coral we could not source to an ethical standard we would sign. They may return in a later edition; Edition 001 was not their moment.

One stone was never in question. Turquoise is named for Turkey in nearly every European language, not because it formed there but because it travelled through Turkish hands on its way west. The founder of this house is a Turkish engineer in the Netherlands. A stone defined by its journey rather than its origin, carrying Turkey in its name: that is not a selection, that is a signature.

The other nine earned their numbers. Each one now has its own page, its own story, and its own temperament on the bench, which the making page describes without romance. Ten stones, ten temperaments, ten pieces.