THE STONE REVIVALS

New timepieces featuring dials made of hard stone have stolen the show of late, most notably at the recent Watches And Wonders 2025 in Geneva. We dive into this recurring trend.

- ZARA ZHUANG

Among the new watches launched in 2025, the ones featuring stone dials turned heads and made waves for their striking colours, mesmerising striations, and incredible detail.

While they were captivating in their own right, they are the latest in a long evolution of this style. Stone-dial watches have come a long way since they burst onto the scene some five decades ago, and by their reception this year, they are not going anywhere.

Hard stones are sometimes still known by the humbling name "semiprecious stones", a moniker applied to those not fortunate enough to be diamonds, emeralds, rubies or sapphires. This is not a strictly scientific definition, because the term encompasses a diverse range of materials that white coats would otherwise categorise more rigorously as organic solids, crystals, rocks, minerals or mineraloids. And to add to the confusion, some semiprecious stones, namely the opaque ones such as tiger's eye, malachite, turquoise, coral, jade, and agate, can be considered and are often referred to as ornamental stones as well.

These stones have had a far longer history in the realm of jewellery and decorative arts, where they were highly prized for their rarity and beauty, and thus enjoyed a close association with royalty and religion. In Mesopotamia and the Levant during the Neolithic period, lapis lazuli, turquoise and carnelian were fashioned into beads and pendants; in ancient Egypt, the same stones could be found in amulets and burial objects, such as the winged scarab pectoral of Tutankhamun.