As we head into the new year, we have our first article of this productive and prosperous year. A young man by the name of Arnoud De Ball has made New years day special. On New years eve, he announced on his social media channels that the first watch release of the year for the young L’Artisan company would hit the market on the first day of the year. Looking through the short yet impressive history of L’Artisan, one watch has grabbed all the headlines, the L’Artisan Charoite is simply put a work of art, a perfect mix of style, elegance, and the unique features of a stone dial. Its success led to many microbrands trying to replicate its magic and commercial success.

To combat this(and add a completely unique piece of art to his catalog), Arnaud has blessed the world with the L’Artisan Charoite MK II. This rare dark charoite is practically unique on the market; many have been making regular charoite, including most recently Baltic, including it in their latest Prismic stone dial batch. But this dark charoite is, from what I can tel,l the only one of its kind currently sold on the market.

Now, that being said, you are not buying a mechanical masterpiece with this watch; you have a reliable but insignificant Miyota 9015 automatic caliber, where the best thing it has going for it is the affordability, as well as the thickness that lends itself to the watch wearing incredibly snug in the 38 mm case and a thickness of only 9 mm. The watch does not have a set number, and it is not called a limited edition model, but I do expect it to be served in very limited quantities due to the limited nature of the stone itself.

Pricing is not bad either, for the unique nature of the watch you are getting, costing only 685 euros, this watch is an absolute hit to spice up the collection.

As you can see, I am a big fan. This is not the first watch from L’Artisan I adore, as the dinosaur bone watch is one of the craziest watches I have ever seen. The best thing is Anraud and the company are not settling for what they have got, as he announced they are working to start using some Swiss-made movements in select models later this year.

I highly implore everyone to support this young independent watchmaker by following him on his social media channels, as well as taking a closer look at the watch I just talked about. A link to the product page is here.