CZAPEK | Collections - Promenade - Goutte de Rosée

Moving from the blue dials of the original Goutte d’Eau to the green of the Rosée introduced a new layer of technical difficulty. The composition of green enamel can interact unpredictably with the silver substrate, causing adhesion problems and surface blemishes. Donzé Cadrans evaluated approximately ten different green enamel formulations before identifying one that offered both the right visual character and the necessary stability on silver. The high-relief topography of the dial compounded this challenge. On a standard guilloché base — with its shallow, consistent engraving depth — enamel application is relatively uniform. Here, artisans must ensure complete coverage across both the deep recesses and the high peaks of the relief, since any gap in the initial layers will produce dark streaks when the enamel contracts in the kiln. Building up the enamel evenly across such pronounced height differences requires considerable skill and experience: at Donzé Cadrans only four craftspeople apply enamel to these dials with the required regularity, each having already logged years of work on Grand Feu white dials and standard transparent enamels before graduating to this technique.