Bold and Disruptive

ArtyA's watches meet at the intersection of art, innovation, and timekeeping. To understand its world of colour-changing cases, mirrored dials, and skeletonised movements, we talk to founder Yvan Arpa.

- by Somya Rauthan

It is with this thought that Arpa founded the brand in 2009, with the intention to highlight not so much time telling, but the stories behind time.

Distilling it all in the company slogan, ‘Manufacture of Emotions,’ Arpa has executed the idea by crafting avant-garde timepieces with innovative new materials and movements. One could also say this notion extends to brand name—a portmanteau of ‘Art’ and the founder's initials.

If the watch is anything like the NanoSaphir, the reference number is certainly not what the wearer will use to describe it. The watch employs a high-tech polycrystalline sapphire, which is treated at the molecular level to show colour-changing properties under different lighting conditions. The material is used to make the case, lugs, and crown. The brand has also used moissanite, a diamond-like stone commonly used in jewellery—in 2023, ArtyA harnessed its properties, hardness, and brilliance to create an entire case, in the watch Purity Moissanite, making it a world-first. And it gets eccentric from here. ArtyA has also used ethically sourced butterfly wings, tobacco leaves, natural coral, real bullets, lightning strikes, spider webs, gold, and has even customised watches with hair and blood as a means of artistic expression.