We are delighted to present our Millésime of 2025, Perception 漩 (Xuán), featuring a natural pietersite dial inspired by the textures and tones of 山水盆景 (shānshuǐ pénjǐng), or mountain-water landscape gardens.
These gardens featured prominently in the hearts of Chinese architectural compounds, and served as visual and symbolic centres that guided how the surrounding buildings were experienced.
漩 (Xuán) represents our first-ever incorporation of stonework into one of our timepieces, and as our second Millésime, launches in celebration of and gratitude towards our community, to which we owe so much of our success to.
It launches as a time-limited edition, and is available between 28 January 2026 and 6 February 2026 (11:00 HKT, GMT+8).
The first 225 orders will be delivered in Q2, 2026, and all subsequent orders will be fulfilled in Q4, 2026.
It is available here.
The Millésime Returns
When we launched the Millésime edition back in 2024, it was meant as a yearly, limited and community-driven timepiece that allowed us to pay the community back by offering an exclusive, yet obtainable edition that the community was given priority access to.
The project also offered us the freedom of a blank canvas on which the brand could try out its boldest, most experimental and/or requested-for configurations of existing collections as a yearly “vintage” that would never return thereafter.
2025 was undoubtedly a monumental year for the brand, with two brand new lines, an extensive slate of exhibitions and events, and hugely expanded retail presence
None of this would have been possible without the support and belief of our global Atelier Wen family, and as we begin the new year, we wanted to retrospectively commemorate what has been a humbling and meaningful 2025 with the next instalment of our community-centric Millésime editions.
As our Millésime for 2025, Perception 漩 (Xuán) is our love letter to you, our community. We are beyond grateful for the support you have shown us, and we hope you find the release as meaningful as we did creating it for you.
Presenting: Perception 漩 (Xuán), Pietersite
For the second year running, the Millésime arrives in the familiar silhouette of the brand’s integrated bracelet steel sports watch, Perception. But while it possesses a similar form, the visual heart of the watch has been replaced with something altogether different.
One of Perception’s calling cards has always been the hand-turned guilloché dial. The craft has been a mainstay to the Perception line since its launch in 2022, and featured in every single variant of the watch. Until now.
In 漩 (Xuán), guilloché makes way for a dial that has been delicately crafted out of natural pietersite. A rare and captivating semi-precious stone, it features a swirling mix of blue, black, gold and brown veins that substitutes the methodical order of engine-turning for something more organic and satisfyingly turbulent.
The iridescent textures of Perception 漩 (Xuán)’s pietersite dial represent the very first time that the brand has ventured to incorporate stonework into one of our releases, with the experimental nature of the Millésime editions being the perfect canvas for this introduction.
Selecting suitable slabs of raw pietersite was a necessarily painstaking process due to the natural inclusions that resulted in colour combinations less suited to its architectural reference of the 山水盆景 (shānshuǐ pénjǐng).
The creation of the dial also proved extremely challenging due to pietersite’s natural brittleness and the delicacy of the twelve individual cut-outs for Perception’s hour indices. These are wirecut by-hand in a stonecraft workshop in Zhejiang, before being sent to polishers in Guangdong. This step also requires threading a fine balance between polishing the pietersite to a perfect sheen, and preserving enough thickness in the stone such that it retains its integrity.
Perception 漩 (Xuán) once more carries the Millésime’s hallmark of a small engraving of the brand’s logo on the caseback as a subtle marker of the edition. With a case and bracelet crafted out of 904L stainless steel, and a customised extra-thin Peacock SL1588A calibre, it is designed to stand up effortlessly to the demands of daily wear.
山水盆景 (shānshuǐ pénjǐng): Architectural Tableaus of Rock and Water
When Perception was first conceived, our designer, Alfred Chan, drew inspiration from traditional cues in Chinese architecture. The elegant outlines of classical rooftops and windows were reimagined as case and bracelet geometries, the intricacies of 榫卯 (sǔn mǎo), or Chinese joinery, formed the structural framework of the dial’s construction, and the demeanour of the 石狮子 (shí shīzi), or stone guardian lion, presided over the movement’s protection on the caseback.
With the 2025 Millésime being the first Perception variant that we were launching in more than a year, the collection’s foundational, architectural essence was something we wanted to retain - even extend. And this ultimately came in the form of one of the key features found in many traditional Chinese architectural compounds - the 盆景 (pén jǐng), or landscape garden.
Far from being merely decorative, these miniature worlds of plant, rock and water were placed at the heart of a home or courtyard to serve as visual, cosmological and symbolic centres. The concept of 风水 (fēng shuǐ), and the placement of objects that represent the five fundamental elements in Chinese tradition - earth, water, wood, metal and fire, forms a cardinal consideration within the visual grammar of Chinese architecture.
In many traditional architectural compounds, 盆景 (pén jǐng), or landscape gardens, were carefully and intentionally curated and situated in central courtyards as an invocation of these elements in order to “influence” the spiritual flow and invitation of different energies and fortunes. More tangibly, these gardens also acted as focal points, bringing visual balance, anchoring the dynamism of the buildings around them, and guiding how this surrounding architecture was experienced.
This same philosophy endures till this day, and guided our choice of pietersite, or 风暴石 (fēng bào shí), in Perception 漩 (Xuán). With its deep blue-black tones and swirling patterns, it naturally echoes the visual imprint and spirit of 山水盆景 (shānshuǐ pénjǐng), or mountain-water landscape gardens. These were the oldest and most classical renditions of such gardens, and placed emphasis on representations of movement and flow through the use of cascading water, mist and careful arrangement of rock formations.
The stone itself was only discovered in the 20th century (with the only two known deposits uncovered first in Namibia in 1962, and soon after, in Henan, China, in 1966), and is therefore not part of the traditional Chinese hierarchy of stones. However, modern interpretations of 风水 (fēng shuǐ), hold it in high regard, with pietersite carrying significance as an invocation of water and metal elements due to its visual resonance with them.
Often referred to as the "storm” or “tempest” stone, it is said to emblematise movement, dynamism, change and flow, presenting a fitting reflection of the recently departed year and what it has signified for Atelier Wen.
Specifications
Case
- 40mm diameter x 47mm lug-to-lug x 9.4mm thickness (incl. crystal)
- 904L stainless steel case with contrasting surfaces and exceptional attention to finish
- Semi-display caseback with hammered texture surrounding raised stone lion motif
- CNC-engraved, 3D lettering
- 100m/10 ATM
Dial
- Natural pietersite dial
- Four-layered dial construction, inspired by ancient Chinese architectural tenets of Sunmao (friction/imbrication through mortise and tenon joints)
- Chinese huiwen-patterned chapter ring, printed in Super-LumiNova ®, X1 grade, PVD-plated in black
- Applied rhodium-plated indices
Hands
- Voluminous, rhodium-plated, leaf-shaped hands with Super-LumiNova ®, X1 grade
- Hand-bent minutes and seconds
Crystal
- Double-domed dial-side sapphire crystal with 10 layers of anti-reflective coating
- Sapphire crystal caseback window with 10 layers of anti-reflective coating
Movement
- Customised, extra-thin (3.4mm) Dandong Peacock SL1588A
- Decorated in circular côtes de Genève with polished jewel and screw sinks, and heat-blued screws
- Tungsten rotor with circular côtes de Genève and black rhodium plating.
- Automatic winding
- 32 jewels
- 28,800 bph
- ~41 hour power reserve
- +/- 10s per day and further adjusted in 5 positions and for temperature fluctuations
- Tested exhaustively by the horological research institute of light industry (HRILI)
Bracelet
- 904L brushed stainless steel bracelet with individually chamfered links and exceptional attention to finish
- Tapering from 22mm at the case to 18mm at the clasp, and thinning gradually from 3mm at the case to 2.6mm at the clasp
- Quick-release spring bars
Bracelet and clasp
- Proprietary, patent-pending on-the-fly micro adjustment system
- Telescopic deployant blade system for enhanced comfort and wearability