Sara Bran swaps stone for precious metal in her new collaboration with Piaget

A lace in time

Sara Bran’s foray into jewellery began with a small piece of stone broken by accident while carving. “I made a pendant out of it,” she shares. “I’ve had an interest in jewellery for a long time, so I started a collection following the pendant and it was quite successful.”

For Piaget, Bran conceived a pair of pink gold timepieces showcasing two very different applications of gold lace — an art for which she is believed to be the originator and still its foremost exponent. The Piaget Altiplano Double Jeu Gold Lacework is an extra-thin proposition carrying the manual wound 430P movement, with the dial partially hidden behind a window of diamond-set gold lacework. A pusher pops open the window, which is encircled on the upper bezel by brilliant-cut diamonds.

This is limited to eight, while the High Jewellery Gold Lacework Cuff Watch is an extravagant one-of-one. A natural white opal dial shows the hands of its quartz movement. Meanwhile, radiating outwards from this dial are 382 brilliant-cut and 30 marquise-cut diamonds around the cuff. Bran first drew the intended pattern on tracing paper before outlining it on the gold plate, then removing material by hand with a Bocfil saw. “Gold is a beautiful material I must say. I think it is not just by chance that, in the history of jewellery, gold has been so widely explored yet there is still a lot to discover which does not happen with other metals.”

Whether Bran has left stones behind for good is not for certain, but her thoughts on honing a craft are profound to say the least. “Once you specialise you have to concentrate on your skills. I compare this with playing music, you cannot master several instruments in your life. You make a choice and keep going in that direction. “Maybe one day I will say I’ve done enough and I will do something else, but I have not found the end yet.”

Piaget