To celebrate the Year of the Rabbit, Hublot collaborated with Chinese artist Wen Na to create a unique dial painting for the Spirit of Big Bang Black Ceramic Rabbit watch.
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On the eve of the Lunar New Year, Swiss luxury watchmaker Hublot invited Wen Na to create a New Year’s painting “Year of the Rabbit” and introduce the black ceramic rabbit Spirit of Big Bang. The fusion of traditional Chinese culture with modern precision watchmaking gave rise to new ideas: Wen visualized 12 double watches made of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches and combined them with traditional elements of the Lunar New Year. Hence, we find festive lanterns, fireworks and lion dance in artworks to create a mesmerizing world to ring in the new year. The time is filled with wonder and excitement at each double hour, fully expressing the spirit of Hublot’s Art of Fusion.
In traditional Chinese culture, the rabbit is considered sacred and auspicious, which is why 2023, the year of the rabbit, is considered “lucky”. Hublot wanted to give the artist the green light to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Wen Na created Silvester with her vivid artistic language and used her wild imagination to visualize the 12 double clocks in a unique way. A group of charming naive rabbits having fun dancing the lion dance, holding firecrackers or indulging in other traditional Chinese pastimes and celebrating wonderful moments over time. This scene depicts an energetic and prosperous Year of the Rabbit and also conveys the atmosphere of the Lunar New Year, an occasion for a family reunion.
Informed by Hublot’s Art of Fusion brand concept, Wen drew inspiration from the ancient calendar of the Tiancan Dizhi, an ancient and mysterious Chinese cultural treasure. At the dual 12 o’clock position is combined with the image of rabbits to bring a sense of joy and reunion. Meanwhile, she believes that the fine arts of our world take many different forms, the essence of which lies in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. In his painting, a group of quick-witted rabbits recreate traditional customs associated with the Lunar New Year, including performing dragon and lion dances, installing or changing door deities, hanging festive lanterns and giving and receiving red packets (Lunar New Year). Rabbit gives money in a red envelope). There’s always something to enjoy every two hours – from the Hour of Death to the Hour of Two. The twelve branches above ground are also used to record the year and month, implying that every day and every month is a good time in Hublot’s world of time.
In addition, according to Wen, rabbits are not only gentle and cute. She gave the rabbits a more modern look and presented them in a slightly playful style. Following the theme of the Year of the Rabbit and the quintessence of traditional Chinese culture, she changed the usual image of the gentle rabbits and artistically created the funny rabbits, which are energetic at different times of the day and breathe fresh vitality into them. New Year’s Eve and accurately interprets Hublot’s innovative and pioneering spirit of “being different”. A modern interpretation of a classic.
The entire visual image is imprinted in their mind, which is then embodied in a canvas with powerful images that interpret the rhythm of minutes and seconds, transporting joyful emotions into the new year. This creation is the result of the fusion of Haute Horlogerie know-how with traditional art and culture, the essence of Eastern and Western cultures, past and present.
Coming from China, Wen Na is acclaimed as one of the main younger modern-day Chinese artists for her distinct creative style. She graduated with a chief in printmaking and evolved an indissoluble bond with “fusion of arts” at some point of her college years. From mural artwork to sculpture and from artwork to music, Wen has continuously experimented with the fusion of numerous artwork forms, leveraging precise aesthetic standards to encourage new considering present day artwork. The “fusion of arts”, which Wen believes is the riding pressure in the back of suggestion and creativeness and is also consistent with Hublot’s Art of Fusion emblem concept. With its ingenuity and craftsmanship, Hublot has mixed reputedly diametrically adversarial substances and joined arms with the maximum proficient practitioners in exchange fields to push the limits of what’s technically and aesthetically viable to set new developments for watchmaking.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with a young artist like Wen Na who is a master of traditional Chinese culture to craft a new Lunar New Year painting and present the Spirit of Big Bang Black Ceramic Rabbit. Everyone who saw Wen Na’s mural work was shocked as she has fused her strong imagination with rich colors and lines. More interestingly, these images are not replicas of existing traditional symbols, but a combination of her use of the place where the murals are located, history, and her strong imagination. Her unique artistic style perfectly embodies the bold creative vision that we have at Hublot. Meanwhile, Hublot loves Art has been demonstrating through various forms of expression and creations how the brand loves to fuse different artistic inspirations and styles. Hublot Loves Art!” RICARDO GUADALUPE, HUBLOT CEO.
“The partnership with Hublot is a very pleasant surprise. It is also an interesting combination to integrate the ancient representation of time in traditional Chinese culture, the sexagenary cycle, with Hublot and its pioneering watch. More importantly, Hublot’s presentation of the animation also amazed me, and the whole creative process made me feel very smooth and happy as well.” WEN NA, CONTEMPORARY ARTIST.
Inspired by Hublot’s brand concept Art of Fusion, Wen Na interpreted the twelve branches of the earth, the symbol of the traditional Chinese calendar, with artistic imagination to represent the characteristic 12 double hours. A group of adorable bunnies enjoying a lion dance, holding firecrackers or doing other things celebrate the wonderful moments of each double hour. This watch is a fusion of the essence of Chinese culture and innovative watchmaking concepts, while demonstrating the connection between East and West cultures through a unique artistic language.
A Year of the Rabbit-themed portray is vividly rendered right into a festive scene at the dial with playful rabbits at one of a kind double-hours, way to the brand’s super craftsmanship. Hublot artisans use quite a few brushes to color the dial, with a few info supplied in hair-skinny first-class strokes. Each hand- painted dial is created thru a complex system that takes over forty hours. Each dial of the 12 portions isn’t the same as the others, consequently all are precise works of art that show off the brand’s superb watchmaking expertise. In addition, the illustration of hour markers has followed an inventive expression that derives from the conventional twelve Earthly Branches, representing a tribute to profound Chinese subculture and Hublot’s efforts of taking its pioneering philosophy of fusion to a brand new height.
This watch has a barrel-shaped case, characteristic of the Spirit of Big Bang collection, and incorporates all the elements of the classic Big Bang watch design: six H-shaped screws on the bezel, lugs on the sides of the case. , molded rubber screw-down crown with the iconic H and layered construction. Additionally, the Spirit of Big Bang Black Ceramic Rabbit watch is crafted from black ceramic to provide the perfect contrast to the beautiful dial depiction of rabbits celebrating the Lunar New Year. The 42mm case houses the HUB1710 automatic movement with a power reserve of 50 hours.
HUBLOT
Hublot is a Swiss watch manufacturer founded in 1980 and based in Nyon. For its first ever timepiece, this fundamentally disruptive company combined gold with a rubber strap in a case with a design inspired by a ship’s porthole (hublot in French). Thus, the Art of Fusion was born, blending tradition, innovation, craftsmanship, worlds and talents. It became the brand’s aesthetic and technical signature.
This identity was strengthened in 2005 with the Big Bang, which attested to an unrivalled know-how in terms of complications, manufacture movements and state-of-the-art materials. Carbon, titanium, ceramic and sapphire have been developed on this model to technical extremes.
This ground-breaking, high-quality approach to watchmaking is summed up in its philosophy ‘Be First, Unique and Different.’ It gradually led to other collections with innovative designs: Classic Fusion, Spirit of Big Bang, Square Bang and Manufacture Pieces. These draw on high levels of craftsmanship, both in terms of the materials so dear to Hublot (such as Magic Gold, brightly-coloured ceramics and sapphires) and its manufacture movements (Unico chronograph, Meca-10 and large complications such as the Tourbillon, the Cathedral Minute Repeater and the specific Manufacture Pieces movements).
Hublot’s world extends to powerful partnerships including football. ‘Hublot Loves Football’ has become the slogan at the world’s biggest sporting events (such as the FIFA World CupTM, Premier League, UEFA Champions League, UEFA EUROTM) and through its ambassadors. This love of football continues in art, design, music, sport, fine dining and sailing. Lastly, Hublot’s implication in joint environmental projects with SORAI and Polar Pod reflects its concern for the issues of the day. Almost 130 boutiques around the world share Hublot’s fervour and values, alongside the Hublot.com e-commerce site.