I’ll admit, I’m late to the party. I didn’t discover Atelier Wen until last year when a friend told me I should check out the brand and connected me with its founder, Robin Tallendier. The pair knew how to tug at my heartstrings straight away: enamel dials. For those of you who know a little bit about me, you are well aware that métiers d’art crafts are my passion, but I have a particular affinity for enamel dials. Perhaps it is more than an affinity and closer to an obsession. I have taken my love of enamel from admirer to aspiring artisan, completing three enameling apprenticeships in Switzerland to learn the artform myself.
After going back and forth with Robin for a few months and musing over the watches from a distance, I finally had the chance to experience them in the metal for the first time at Dubai Watch Week last November. I was immediately struck by the technique of the Ancestra and Inflection dials with a hammered base that added further depth and texture to the enamel itself. While the beauty of enamel (especially when paired with techniques like guilloche) is its interplay with light, something about the organic nature of the hand hammering brought an even deeper sense of life and movement to these dials.
Since then, Atelier Wen has branched out, expanding its expertise in stunning dials beyond guilloche, hand hammering, enamel, and (in the past) porcelain to its latest model showcasing natural stone: the limited edition Millésime 2025 Perception. The 2025 model marks the brand’s second special edition in the Millésime series, skirting across the finish line at the start of 2026 thanks to a few production delays. You may remember the inaugural installment came in 2024 with a Perception model rendered in titanium with a bold purple guilloche dial.
For the brand’s newest model, the base is once again the Perception collection. Here, you have a 904L stainless steel construction from case to bracelet. Design elements echo the quintessential luxury sport watch with an angular, octagonal case given a touch of softness and whimsy with gently curved lines rather than straight ones. Extending from the case is an integrated and tapered bracelet featuring trapezoidal center links and chamfered edges. The bracelet is secured by Atelier Wen’s unique clasp design, with a telescopic deployant blade system for enhanced comfort and wearability and proprietary, patent-pending on-the-fly micro adjustment system. All in all, the proportions clock in at a moderately sized 40mm case with a 47mm lug-to-lug and a relatively slim thickness of 9.4mm including the double-domed sapphire crystal.
Flip the watch over and you get a glimpse of the balance bridge and rotor of the customized extra-thin (3.4mm) Dandong SL1588 automatic movement offering a 41-hour power reserve. Bifurcating the partial exhibition caseback, Atelier Wen once again puts its hammering and engraving techniques on display with a hammered texture surrounding the raised stone lion motif.
Still, the star of the show remains on the dial side with the four-layered construction, inspired by ancient Chinese architectural tenets of Sunmao, a 7,000-year-old technique traditionally used in woodworking that connects wooden pieces using interlocking joints without nails or glue. Atelier Wen applied this same sensibility to pietersite, a stone I admit I was not familiar with and had to research. This rare form of quartz primarily found in China is valued for its unique, chaotic, and storm-like appearance as well as its healing properties associated with the Third Eye chakra. It is considered a stone of “inner vision” and personal truth, which feels fitting as we head into the grounding energy of the Year of the Horse this month. If you know me, you know I am also a bit of a woo-woo girl, and while stone dial watches do not lean into this realm quite as literally as zodiac watches, I am certainly intrigued by the energy this stone carries.
Getting back to the practical aspects of pietersite for those of you who are just simply lovers of beautiful watches, this stone dial ticks all the boxes. Just like the hand-hammered then enameled dials in Atelier Wen’s other collections, the pietersite’s play with light is truly mesmerizing. Simply rotate your wrist ever so slightly clockwise or counterclockwise and you will be entranced as the “storm” of colors appears to move and swirl around the dial, repeating the sensation of classical mountain-water gardens just as the brand intended. While shades of blue, black, gray, and silver are the dominant colors, you can easily bring out the flecks of red, pink, brown, and copper with the right ensemble. I wore this watch with a pale pink sweater, and these warmer tones began to leap off the dial in natural light.
Aesthetics aside, I have a couple bones to pick about the wearability of this watch, but I must preface this with acknowledgment of my petite frame and 5.75-inch wrist. That said, Atelier Wen notes that this watch has “a wearing experience closer to 38/39mm, suiting smaller and larger wrists alike,” but I unfortunately did not find this to be the case in my time with a review sample. While the 40mm case works for my wrist (for reference, I have rocked up to a 42mm watch from another maker) and the thickness of 9.4mm helps to offset the size, the 47mm lug-to-lug in combination with the drop of the integrated bracelet make this model wear larger than a typical 40mm watch, in my opinion. This bracelet-drop and integration is one of my biggest sticking points when it comes to design, and for someone with a small frame and wrist, it can make or break the ability for me to wear a particular watch.
However, ending on a high note, if the fit was better suited for my proportions, I would scoop up this model in a heartbeat. The classic luxury sport watch nature of the Perception in combination with a subtle but gorgeous pietersite dial makes this a strong contender for a daily wear if you are looking for something with a little more personality and interest than a standard solid dial. Pre-orders for the initial numbered batch of 225 pieces have closed, but subsequent models will be available with their serials reset as well as being individually and sequentially numbered and marked with a different seal that will distinguish their batch. The retail price of the Millésime edition is $3,600. For more information, you can visit Atelier Wen’s official website.
