Created for a Finnish collector’s wife’s birthday, the Voutilainen 28 KOHAN Unique Piece blends Tatsuo Kitamura’s Urushi lacquer art, traditional hand engraving and enamel with the workshop’s longevity and precision philosophy, resulting in a true horological masterpiece.

The one-of-a-kind timepiece highlights a mesmerizing case, a distinctive dial made using Urushi lacquering technique along with a movement whose bridges and ratchet wheel are crafted with the same meticulous art, requiring over a thousand hours of work. The raw materials used in this artwork include “Urushi” (tree sap), “Kinpun” (various gold powder), “Kirigane” (cut gold sheets) and ‘Kirigai’ (cut shells from the great green turban and New Zealand abalone).

According to the collector’s wishes, the dial depicts scenes of archipelago of the Lake Saimaa, with a glimmering water surface and colours of Finnish autumn foliage. Hundreds of shell pieces hand-cut from different shells such as green-turban and abalone are meticulously sorted by colour, gleam and shape. They are then combined with hand-cut materials in fine gold, platinum and coloured lacquer and finely inlaid in dense compositions across multiple Urushi layers, applied repeatedly like a mille-feuille. Each piece is carefully hand-polished at every stage to create a textured surface reminiscent of a pebble-grained.

The outermost layer’s subtle asperities produce delicate plays of light and shadow, bringing the themed decoration to life—revealing its magic from different viewing angles. The dial also reveals a captivating sky that transforms with the light: under bright illumination, it becomes a vivid blue sky with white clouds appearing, while in the shade, it shifts into a deep night sky where only the water surface gently reflects a faint glow, reminiscent of moonlight. It is made with a unique technique that has been kept secret.