Selten Yum Cha

Selten has released a limited hand-wound watch called Yum Cha, with a grand feu enamel dial, at $4,900. Yum cha is the Cantonese practice of drinking tea and eating dim sum, usually with several generations of a family, usually loudly, usually on a Sunday morning.

Grand feu enamel is the reason for the price. Powdered glass is laid on a metal dial and fired above 800 degrees, repeatedly, and each firing can destroy it. Yields are poor, the work cannot be rushed or automated, and the people who do it well are countable. Nothing else produces that depth, and enamel does not fade, so the dial will outlast the movement behind it.

The technique is not what makes this interesting. Watch dials are overwhelmingly about the same few things: the sea, aviation, motorsport, the moon, occasionally a mountain. An enamel dial about a family meal is a genuinely unusual choice, aimed at people for whom that meal is a specific memory rather than a theme. A much smaller audience, and a much more certain one.

Three and a half thousand pounds is real money for a hand-wound watch with no complication. You are paying for the dial. You should be.