Moonlit Serpentine: Oriental Garden on Your Wrist
In the 19th century, Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden, with its iconic Huxin Pavilion and winding Zigzag Bridge, became enduring symbols of Shanghai’s cultural hub. Taking cue from this historical garden, Shanghai Watches presents the Moonlit Serpentine, a rare blend of ancient gold carving artistry and the finesse of mechanical design. This watch transforms Yuyuan’s picturesque beauty into a masterpiece on the wrist, encapsulating its meandering bridges and layered pavilions in exquisite miniature form.
Made as its centerpiece art, with gold carving, and nacre as its background, each part of the watch reaches the ultimate expression of craftsmanship. Gold carving, a laborious and delicate technology, demands preeminence, endurance, and accuracy. It is possible to shape metal into three-dimensional scenes, only by mastercraftsmen with experience and taste, after years of hard work.
The Moonlit Serpentine honors the art of the East in watchmaking with two precious designs, in black and white. Different black nacre dial in a 18Kgold engraving, and the white dial in a Pt950 platinum engraving. They synergistically symbolize Yuyuan Garden bathed in sunshine in the daytime and bathed in peaceful moonlight at night. These forms call to mind the lanterns of an inky garden and the otherworldly beauty of a snowdrift, together offering a spectacular sight of wrist elegance.
The model of 40mm has a pine attached from 3 o'clock, and 36mm has a plum blossom flower attached. This pairing—known as “Pine and Plum”—symbolizes resilience, purity, and beauty in Chinese culture, forming part of the revered “Three Friends of Winter. By embedding this poetic imagery into the mechanical design, the watch infuses the dial with profound Eastern charm and deep aesthetic resonance. It is an occasion of eternal beauty and good luck, art, and time fused into images of plum blossoms to welcome the arrival of spring.
On the natural nacre dial, the picturesque scenes of Jiangnan gardens are reproduced in the form of finely crafted gold leaves and inscriptions. The sophisticated Zigzag Bridge extends from the dial edge to the left and links to the Huxin Pavilion. This "bridge to inclusivity" structure connects cultures and opens the world to a peaceful tea house at Yuyuan's core, with a view of its glory. When the fine textures of lake stones, the fine texture of plum blossoms branches, and the sharp angles of the pavilions, bridge surfaces, on one hand, discerning and enhancing the vividness and depth, on the other hand, revealing the harmonious relationship between the beauty of nature and architectural details.
This dreamy environment tends to break down the distinction between what is real and what is mental. The dial of the Moonlit Serpentine is a poetic scene of superimposed mountains and water with embedded exquisite pavilions that assert the supreme expressiveness of gold carving. It invites endless contemplation and appreciation.
The craftsmanship shines in every detail. None traditional numerals, the 12-pointing marker itself is a sun-and-moon design, which suggests unity and reunion. Hour and minute hand adopts a willow-leaf shape, which coincidently embodies the garden view's grace. Black and white mother-of-pearl dials flash with iridescent multichromic hues in the bright light, just like ripples and moonlight in Yuyuan Garden. The Huxin Pavilion and Zigzag Bridge stand gracefully above the sparkling lake, accented by vibrant plum blossoms, creating a tableau of harmonious beauty. This extraordinary timepiece captures the timeless essence of Yuyuan Garden, merging the poetry of art with the precision of timekeeping in an enduring tribute to Chinese craftsmanship.