The Bas-Relief Collection

A collection in the same spirit as the ‘Vision’ whose concept tells a story in 3-D, the Bas-Relief Collection takes the form of a classical round case. Specialist in applied arts, Ollivier Savelli creates and produces unique crafted dials from his imagination or for special client orders based on a supplied idea or photograph. The dial is hand-sculpted in bas-relief in a block of wax faithful to the reproduction of the image and is then cast in gold, silver, bronze or another metal. The great difficulty is to create a bas-relief and a realistic perspective on a thickness of 4/10ths of a millimetre, given that the total maximum thickness of the dial is only 0.8/10ths of a millimetre.

Ollivier uses a binocular loupe to perfectly recreate the details of his oeuvres well beyond a normal visual perceptiveness, The sculpting of the visual demands extreme precision since every gesture marks the malleable wax. Given that the enlargement through the binocular loupe is magnified x 20, Ollivier’s gestures have to be twenty times more precise and necessitates a technique whereby he hold’s his breath for the duration of every movement so as not to perturb the precision.The dial is then decorated, stone-set, painted or enamelled depending on the whims of the most demanding clients, before being placed in the watchcase. The finished piece, which is a fusion of sculpture, engraving and jewellery, is also subjected to the technical demands of watchmaking.Produced in Switzerland, the watches of the Bas-Relief Collection are animated by a top-quality automatic mechanical Swiss movement.