When Noble Craftsmanship Goes Mainstream: Three Watches, Three Faces of "Hammering"

A single dial can take hundreds, even thousands of strikes to finish. Craftsmen work with small hammers or polished steel punches, tapping out peaks and valleys across a flat surface one blow at a time. Depending on the technique, the resulting texture can look like the surface of the moon, like tree bark, or like frozen ripples on water. This kind of hand-hammering has a long history, but until recently it was almost exclusively reserved for the highest-end watches — simply because it's so labor-intensive. Now it's showing up on three watches with completely different styles, spanning a wide range of price points.

Kuala Lumpur-based independent watchmaker Ming has never been short on ways to keep dials and cases feeling fresh — founder Ming Thein has previously used photographic techniques to shift a dial from color to black depending on hand position, and even made a 3D-printed mesh strap. This time, he partnered with Royal Selangor, a Malaysian pewter manufacturer founded in 1885 known for jewelry, trophies, and tableware. Pewter is rarely used on watch dials, but what caught Ming Thein's eye was exactly how the material reacts once it's hammered.

The result of this collaboration, the 37.06 Royal Selangor, is limited to 88 pieces. It features a titanium case with a hand-hammered pewter dial, where each strike leaves a small crater on the surface — together forming something that looks like the surface of the moon, with every piece turning out slightly different due to the hand-finishing process. Priced under $10,000, it essentially takes a hammering technique once reserved for high-end watches and turns it into a relatively accessible entry point.

Anoma's A1 Prehistoric takes a different route: strictly speaking, it's not hammered but hand-carved, though the visual effect is the same organic pattern of pits and hollows. Each stainless steel case takes a craftsman five hours to complete. Anoma was already known for its distinctive triangular case shape, and Prehistoric pushes the brand's identity even further — limited to 100 pieces at roughly $3,900 each, and it's already sold out.

At the other end of the price spectrum sits Parmigiani Fleurier's Carillon Tourbillon, released for the brand's 30th anniversary with only 5 pieces made worldwide. The design draws inspiration from a 19th-century Perrin Frères pocket watch, featuring a one-minute tourbillon and a four-gong, four-hammer chiming mechanism, with a hand-wound movement finished to an exceptionally high standard. But what really catches the eye is the Morning Blue dial: its hand-hammered surface makes the movement's winding chime gongs pop in three dimensions, while echoing the vertical fluting on the case.

Hammering and carving are prized precisely because every strike is done by hand rather than machine-stamped, meaning no two finished pieces are ever exactly alike — and depending on the technique used, the effect can mimic the texture of stone, bark, water, or snow. This kind of craftsmanship used to be almost exclusively the domain of high-end watches. Now, starting with Ming's 37.06 Royal Selangor, you can get a genuinely hand-hammered dial for under $10,000.