CONTEMPORARY ALCHEMY

At the very edge of watchmaking, we find the art of turning powdered oxides into synthetic crystals, and complicated marriages of two (or more) materials. This is the world of composites and sapphire crystal, and it is getting colourful

- ASHOK SOMAN

As children, we often learn about the strength of groups versus that of individuals, and a commonplace story on the subject goes like this: a single stick is easily broken, but get a bunch of them together and they get pretty tough. This becomes even more obvious when the individual sticks are bound tightly to each other, with strings for example. Apart from the metaphorical implications here, there are plenty of intriguing engineering propositions to consider, and it seems humans have been intrigued for a good long while about the possibilities.

If you are anything like us, you have taken a look at the image we have chosen to open with, the title and description (which we call a deck or a standfirst), to reasonably conclude that we are going to be diving deep into the composites this issue. No doubt this introduction will have reinforced this conclusion, but you would only be half right because we are actually covering crystals and composites. We have chosen this approach not because the materials are related (they are, but also not - it is complicated) but because they offer a brilliant visual contrast. For example, most of the images of watches in this special feature the typical weave of carbon fibre - perhaps the most famous composite material in watchmaking - and every single one is topped by sapphire crystal.