Glashutte Original Senator Meissen - Wonder of Porcelain Dials

The Senator Meissen watch boast a remarkable history, with origins traced back to the towns of Meissen and Glashutte, located in Saxony, Germany, where the word 'manufactory' bears a special meaning.

The towns are situated about 20 miles away from Dresden, the capital of Saxony, and their development have been significantly influenced by the state's turbulent history. The Glashutte Original watch manufactory sources porcelain dials for its Senator Meissen watch from the state-owned Meissen Porcelain Manufactory.

Since 1710, the company has been producing porcelain products and exported them all over the world. The porcelain is famous worldwide as 'Dresden china.' Porcelain pieces, both ornamental and functional, are handmade and feature the prominent Crossed Swords emblem. As though demonstrating its illustrious roots, the dial of the Glashutte Original Senator Meissen also reveals this famed logo.

The Senator Meissen watch movement reflects the well-maintained horological culture and tradition of the Glashutte Original manufactory. Ferdinand Adolph Lange was a master watchmaker who created exclusive timepieces for the Saxon court. The watchmaker founded the first watch manufactory in Glashutte in 1845, with an ambitious idea to develop an independent Saxon watch industry that would concentrate its attention on the production of precise watches in relatively small editions.

Many other renowned watchmakers in Germany would follow Ferdinand Adolph Lange's call to found operations in Glashutte. Nowadays, you will find no other German town with such a high concentration of watch manufacturing firms.

To track the roots of the Glashutte Original Senator Meissen watch, it is necessary to find out more about the manufactory in Meissen.

The Meissen Porcelain Manufactory is housed in a magnificent building with broad stairways and high ceilings. Lutz Richter is the production director of the manufactory.

The production of porcelain is based on a mix of kaolin and feldspar. Talented artists paint different themes on porcelain pieces, everything from flowers to whole landscapes on porcelain trays.

Thomas Hannss is one of the versatile artists working at the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory. He is the one who painted the dials for 'Dresden 800' collection of the brand. The artist created eight exquisite paintings that depicted well-known Dresden symbols, including the Semper Opera, the Zwinger's Crown Gate and the renowned Canaletto view of the old city of Dresden.

Hannss is involved into painting the dials exclusively to meet the high demand among collectors and watch aficionados for the Glashutte Original Meissen watch model. Taking into consideration the numerous orders for the Senator Meissen watch, the artist will be hand-painting the model for at least another six months to follow - it takes him the whole day to paint one dial.

The painting is not the only task that requires meticulous work and takes a lot of time. It is much more difficult to make a dial disk from porcelain than to make it from commonly used materials.

During the first stage of the manufacturing process a pliable mass of porcelain is shaped into a disk, later fired at 1,400 degrees Celsius. The original size of the disk shrinks by 15 percent during the firing process. The specialists have to take this shrinkage into account to make sure there is enough material left to come up with the final disk measuring 33.5 mm in diameter.

The specialists of the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory face one more technical challenge - they have to obtain an absolutely flat wafer-thin disk of 0.8 mm, featuring the same thickness all over. It is important to mention that each disk is subjected to strict quality tests to guarantee that the finished dial fits perfectly within the watch. The disks that manage to stand all dimensional tests are passed to the hand-painting stage.

With help of pencil markings, Thomas Hannss makes sure that the numerals on the dial are positioned at the correct angles and are of the right height. The artist has to draw two diameters of 22.2 mm and 30.8 mm, respectively to guarantee that all the numerals are of the correct size. Finally, to paint the numerals, the artist uses the finest brushes.

Thomas Hannss and other artists apply the porcelain paints in two layers, and each layer is fired in the kiln at 900 Degrees Celsius to get the required depth of color. The Glashutte Original and Meissen Crossed Swords logos are also applied by hand and then fired for the last time.