Rare postage stamps to paintings, a slice of history on your wrist
The Hindu
Rare postage stamps, photographs, paintings and architecture... the Jaipur Watch Company explores bespoke luxury watches
A handmade watch with an image of Hanuman on the dial took the artisans engaged by the Jaipur Watch Company eight months to make. The Jaipur-based artisans are not traditional watchmakers; their forte is to engrave on swords and weapons. Another custom-made watch with a dial of mother of pearl used a 200-year-old coin and an image of Shiva, with the hands of the dial designed like a trishul. Divinity-themed watches are one of the highlights of the Jaipur Watch Company’s bespoke timepieces. Rare coins, postage stamps, motifs, insignia and images that range from personal photographs to architecture are incorporated in the bespoke watches made with precious and semi-precious metals.
“When we rolled out our first collection in 2013, I learnt that there was no other Indian watchmaker specialising in the luxury bespoke segment. Watch retailers would hesitate to display Indian-made watches alongside a Swiss collection, since they felt the quality and aesthetics would not match up. To an extent, we have managed to break that barrier,” says Gaurav Mehta, founder-designer, Jaipur Watch Company.
A first generation entrepreneur, Gaurav saw watchmaking as a possibility to bring together his two hobbies – numismatics and horology: “As a pre-teen, I used to open some of the watches to see how they function and put them back together, with mixed results. One day when I was at my desk, I received a courier of a British India coin I had ordered. The coin had a hole and it struck me that I could incorporate it on the dial. It was a crude experiment; using an adhesive I pasted the coin on the dial.” The watch fetched him attention among friends and family.
A Commerce graduate who then pursued risk management in the UK, Gaurav worked with an insurance firm in London. When the interest in watchmaking got the better of him, he realised there was scope for custom-made watches in India and returned to his hometown: “My father is a chartered accountant and many of my family members are lecturers and doctors. Business was a new terrain but I wanted to give it a try.”
The Jaipur Watch Company was established in 2013 and the first collection was promoted through a Facebook page: “Very few players explored social media marketing at that time. A gentleman from Delhi got in touch and wanted to buy two watches. That was the start.”
The design vocabulary expanded with time. Couples came up with requests for made-to-order watches to mark special occasions, engraving a date (wedding, anniversary) with a photograph or their names/initials against a precious or semi-precious metal background. Think of a gold watch studded with diamonds and a mother of pearl dial, with a personalised image or text.
There were other requests that posed design challenges, such as incorporating a small idol of Ganesha on the dial and the hands of the dial having to be designed without piercing the idol.