A unique fusion of technology and tradition

Since its inception, Maker’s Watch Knot has accomplished a number of challenging milestones that have revolutionized the watch industry. One of these was the revival of Japanese watchmaking, which had previously been in decline. Japan was once the second largest watchmaking nation after Switzerland, but a shift to overseas production had led to factories becoming abandoned and closed down, vastly diminishing Japan’s ability to make watches within the country.
A similar crisis is currently looming over Japan’s traditional lacquer industry. The spread and overuse of industrial lacquer has made cheap lacquer products widely available. This has resulted in a drop in orders, making it impossible for lacquer wholesalers to provide enough work for traditional lacquer artisans. This change represents a collapse in the local production industry. Therefore, before Japan becomes a country where its proud lacquer tradition no longer endures, we hope to demonstrate the value of Japanese lacquer once more. The release of this second lacquer model is born out of this desire. The watch’s ‘deep crimson’ effect is forged by skilled craftsmen through a process of repeated application, drying and polishing. The deep, lustrous and beautifully shiny crimson layer is sprinkled with gold dust shaved from a gold nugget, and its depth brought out with the overlapping of fine particles. All of these traditional processes (lacquering and sprinkling with gold dust) are carried out by the artisans on every individual dial, one by one, by hand. The unique lacquer texture of the dial can be admired through the watch’s sapphire crystal.