The Swiss watchmaker's artisan residency with the Metropolitan Museum of Art culminated in three works that explore the intersection of patrimony, innovation and creative freedom.

“To innovate comes from a root word that means to renew or to make new. It doesn’t necessarily mean to start from the very beginning to destroy and start again.”

That distinction, offered by Heidi Holder, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s outgoing chair of education, gets to the heart of Vacheron Constantin’s latest exploration of craftsmanship.

The Swiss watchmaker and the Met marked the culmination of their inaugural artisan residency on Friday, unveiling three works that extend traditional craft into new forms of expression. Launched in 2025 as part of a partnership established two years earlier, the program brought together woodworker Aspen Golann, ceramicist Ibrahim Said and goldsmith Joy Harvey for an exchange of expertise with the museum’s curators, conservators and scholars, and Vacheron’s artisans in Geneva.

For a maison whose patrimony dates to 1755, the initiative reflects a broader ambition: not merely safeguarding centuries-old savoir-faire, but giving it contemporary relevance.

That proposition is particularly resonant in watchmaking, where the mechanical timepiece has long transcended its practical function. In an increasingly digital, instantaneous world, the appeal of a mechanical watch lies partly in its deliberate anachronism: a miniature feat of engineering whose intricate workings depend on accumulated human knowledge, patience and precision. Its continued cultural currency speaks to a wider appreciation for objects that bear the imprint of their makers.

“It’s not about replicating the past,” said Christian Selmoni, Vacheron Constantin ’s style and heritage director.

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