The inspiration didn't start with the watch. It started with the Seiko Power Design Project — an internal initiative that gives Seiko's own designers permission to break the rules of the house that built them. Over a century of watchmaking, and Seiko still makes room for the wild ideas. That kind of freedom, inside a brand with that much heritage, is what pulled me in.
In sumi-e, the artist doesn't sketch. The brush touches the paper once, and whatever comes from that single motion is what remains — imperfect, honest, irreversible. That's the tension I wanted to bring to the dial. A watch is machined, polished, calibrated. Ink is not. Holding both on the same surface is the whole exercise.
I wanted to use 3D visualization to translate the discipline of Japanese ink into the language of horology. My goal was to keep two opposite forces alive on the same surface — the precision of the Presage case, and the freedom of the brushstroke. Where engineering ends, gesture begins.
If the watch is where art and engineering meet, the dial is where the painting starts.
