Roger Dubuis Grows a Garden on the Dial: Excalibur Lady of the Lake Hawthorn Edition

Roger Dubuis has spent three years building a character. Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, arrived first in Sovereign Grey with the armour of a knightess, then in Sylvan Green with the light of the Broceliande forest behind her. The third chapter is the softest and, in its way, the most difficult: the Hawthorn Edition, a 36 mm rose gold watch whose dial is a garden.

The hawthorn is a strange choice for a jewellery watch. It is a thornbush: white blossom in spring, scarlet berries by autumn, and a hedge of spikes in between. In Arthurian legend it marks the boundary between the human world and the fairy one, which is precisely where Viviane lives. Roger Dubuis has taken the whole plant, not just the pretty part.

Look at the dial and the association becomes structural rather than decorative. Two hundred and forty-nine diamonds, 1.79 carats in total, hold the centre; hawthorn flowers carved in white mother-of-pearl open across them, their stamens rendered as polished gold beads around a diamond pistil. The berries are 13 red sapphires, 0.36 carats, and they are what gives the composition its colour, a red that reads almost like a warning.

The technical problem sits in the small seconds. The indicator is a mother-of-pearl petal mounted on the display disc, built asymmetrically and in three dimensions, which means the tiny hand is unbalanced by design. Balancing it and controlling its inertia at 4 Hz is the kind of detail nobody will notice and which is, in reality, the hard part of the watch. Around it, the flange is snailed on top and matte on the angle, and the galvanised rose gold indexes are filled with lume.

The case is 36 mm by 9.85 mm in 750/1000 rose gold, and it is meant to be read as jewellery first: a diamond-set inset ring running from the case band toward the crown, a fluted bezel set with diamonds of high clarity, polished angles against brushed satin flanks, two inclined lugs each carrying four more stones. The crown keeps the polished Roger Dubuis logo under clear lacquer, a small piece of theatre the Maison has always done well. Water resistance is 30 m, which is enough for a watch like this and no more.

It comes on a deep red alligator strap with a pearled finish and a rose gold pin buckle, and a second strap is supplied so the owner can choose between the berry red of the dial and something quieter.

Behind the sapphire back, the RD830 automatic does the work: 183 components, 27 jewels, 48 hours of reserve, 28,800 vibrations per hour, Cotes de Geneve on the bridges under a NAC coating, and an open-worked 22K pink gold rotor. It is the same calibre logic that has carried the women's Excalibur line, and it is the reason this is a mechanical watch wearing a jewellery dress rather than the other way around.

Three watches, one legend, and a fairly clear editorial position: Roger Dubuis is not making a lady's watch that happens to have a movement. It is making a mechanical watch that happens to be set with 249 diamonds, and the hawthorn, thorns included, is the most honest expression of that idea so far.

The Excalibur Lady of the Lake Hawthorn Edition, reference DBEX1196, is available now through Roger Dubuis boutiques and its authorised retail partners in Hong Kong and Macau.

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