Israeli Diamond Portal Reports: The Art of Time

March 28, 2010 - PRLog -- Mechanical watches are artful machines, to be sure, but it’s the rare timepiece that truly qualifies as artwork.



Itay Noy, an Israeli designer based in Tel Aviv, is among a small but growing group of artist-watchmakers trying to change that.



“I cannot beat the Swiss market—it’s too big and traditional,” Noy says. “So I try to be different.”



Difference, in Noy’s case, comes in the form of a watch collection incorporating digital technologies that transform the dials of his timepieces into canvases for a unique worldview. Noy’s customizable City Squares collection, for example, features cartographic renditions of San Pietro in Rome, Trafalgar in London and Etoile in Paris, each inspired by images found on Google Earth.



The watches in Noy’s Diamonds line, on the other hand, boast a graphic appeal—think computer-generated dots and concentric circles—that evokes an Art Deco-meets-the-Information Age sensibility. Each of Noy’s five models—bearing mostly Swiss-made ETA automatic movements—comes in a limited series of 99 timepieces.


 

Diamonds timepiece in stainless steel by Itay Noy

“My starting point is to tell a story, to treat the watch as a piece of art,” Noy says. “It’s not just about colors and fashions.”



Having trained at Jerusalem’s famed Bezalel Academy, where he received a BFA in jewelry design, as well as the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Holland, where he earned a masters in industrial design, Noy is a consummate artist. A 2007 recipient of the Andrea M. Bronfman Prize for the Arts (“The Andy”), a prestigious award given to Israeli decorative artists, he currently teaches timepiece design to students at Bezalel.



Noy is not the only artist combining bonafide art credentials with a commitment to watchmaking. Paris-based jewelry-artist Philippe Tournaire recently unveiled the Les Portes Du Temps collection of watches, whose inspiration is drawn from ancient civilizations. This is evident in the Doric columns that encompass all four corners of the diamond-studded watch face, and the Roman and Incan doors that serve as guardians of the movement.



On the other side of the aesthetic spectrum lie the Prismatic Timepieces created by Los Angeles jeweler Christian Tse. Pav?d with diamonds and other precious stones, the round watches display the time in an LED display triggered by the click of a hidden stem. Stylishly futuristic, they harken an age when the art of telling the time will be more threatened—and, conversely, more important—than ever.



This article first appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of the IDI’s Reflections Magazine

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The Israeli Diamond Industry organizations
Behind the Israeli Diamond Industry are a group of vital and dynamic institutions. Each one is responsible for a different aspect of the industry’s activities.