In the world of vintage Rolex, a very particular and rare type of dial produced in the late 60s and early 70s is popularly referred to as the "confetti dial". From a cursory glance, confetti dials could be taken to be brown or black dials with a heavy, even patina, and in fact they are still occasionally described as such by those who aren't in the know.
This dial finish, however, was a very deliberate creation, the product of a unique production process very much of its era. What seems remarkable today is the lengths that the manufacturer went to in designing and implementing a texturing process at the microscopic level (more of that later!), simply to create a fairly subtle effect at the macroscopic level. Or did they? Could the aim have been to make a luxuriously crafted object that surprised at all scales, inviting the observer to dive into its depths with a loupe?
In any case, as I will reveal, Rolex didn't have a monopoly on the confetti dial, nor was Rolex per se its creator.
Even in the exhaustively analysed and minutely dissected world of vintage Rolex, the confetti dial is relatively little known compared to other unusual dial finishes such as linen dials, tapestry dials and stone dials. At the time of writing , the only widely available resource about confetti dials I could find online was this YouTube content from Craft + Tailored:
As discussed in these two videos, Rolex confetti dials came in "black" and "brown" versions, and in both cases the effect is created by thousands of microscopic coloured dots that can just about be perceived by the naked eye in the right lighting conditions (and with the aid of reading glasses if you are over 45...). The "brown" variety appears to have been restricted by Rolex to solid gold models, mostly Day-Dates. The full glory of these dials, however, and their construction, is only really appreciated with a microscope.
My journey into confetti dials began with a vintage Girard Perregaux HF chronometer in solid 18K yellow gold I picked up a couple of years ago.
In most lighting conditions and from a normal viewing distance, the dial of this watch appears to be a subtle dark chocolate brown colour, with a rather matt surface and a slight hint of graininess.
Closer up and with good illumination, the texture becomes more apparent:
Keep zooming in, and the true structure is eventually revealed:
The confetti dial is composed of thick layer of "splattered", microscopic blobs of paint. The three dimensional texture doesn't come across very well in still photographs, but at the level of the individual blobs the surface is rather rough, a little like a tray filled with lots of tiny black, yellow and red balls. The brown appearance is a product of the way these colours combine at a larger scale.
At the time I noticed this microscopic texture on my Girard Perregaux, I hadn't heard of confetti dials or of their place in the Rolex world. It was only when SeikoForum, co-moderator of the WatchForum.com website and a noted Rolex aficionado, commented on my pictures there that I knew what to call this type of dial finish. But how similar is my GP dial to the Rolex confetti dials?
Pretty much identical, as it happens...
Confetti dials can look very different with different lighting conditions and especially image processing (colour saturation, warmth, brightness etc), and I don't actually own a Rolex confetti dial to compare with my Girard Perregaux microscopically. However, the appearance and design of these dials is so similar (see also the videos above from Craft + Tailored), that I would be extremely surprised if they weren't made in exactly the same way by the same manufacturer. As well as the surface texture, both dials use the same type of unusual, gold-coloured paint for the dial text as well as their rather similar minute tracks.
So, who made these dials if it wasn't Rolex? It's well-known that in this era, Rolex, in common with many other watch brands, had dials manufactured by a number of third-party companies, in particular Singer, Beyeler and Stern. Again, I don't own a Rolex dial so can't check for any markings on the back, but I do know what the back of my GP dial looks like:
Clearly these dials were made by Beyeler & Cie, an independent dial maker based in Geneva who made very high quality dials for a number of Swiss brands. The company was acquired by Rolex in 2000.
So, if Beyeler made confetti dials for Rolex and Girard Perregaux, did they supply any other manufacturers? While you sometimes see vaguely similarly patterned dials from other brands, these generally look a little different and are likely made in a different way by different manufacturers. However, there is one other brand that certainly used Beyeler confetti dials of this style in the late 60s and early 70s — Longines. In fact, the large majority of extant vintage watches from this period with Beyeler confetti dials were made by Longines. The brand used them in their solid 18K gold 7590, 8300, 8348 and 7828 references (amongst others, most likely). And unlike Rolex and Girard Perregaux, Longines also used these "brown" confetti dials in gold plated references of the same styles, so they are a little easier to acquire.
Here is my 37mm "jumbo" Longines 8300 Ultra-Chron in solid 18K rose gold with the same type of Beyeler signed confetti dial:
The Beyeler signature is less obvious than in the Girard Perregaux, because it's not repeated all over the dial back and is partially obscured by the brazing marks for the Longines winged hourglass logo. It can clearly be seen at the top of the dial, however.
Confetti dials for me capture something definitive about the late 1960s and early 1970s — they are a moonage phenomenon through and through. Combining a high level of craftmanship and attention to detail with aesthetic experimentation and a touch of the far-out, they fall into the same category as really well-made mid-century furniture.
The name is not what I would have chosen, however. What I am most reminded of by the confetti dial is the near infinity of a starscape. If you look into a clear night sky somewhere there is no light pollution, the density of stars you can see is overwhelming. Zoom in with a telescope and it appears to go on for ever, as the smallest area of sky is revealed to be just as dense with suns as the entire vista is when viewed with the naked eye. The red and yellow blobs on the magnified confetti dial might be red giants and smaller, main sequence stars like our own sun.... When I look at one of these dials, I hear Vangelis' theme music from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" in my head. I wonder if something like this was in the mind of the unknown designer.
Do you have one of these dials? I'd be particularly interested to hear from anyone who has a Rolex Day-Date with a brown confetti dial, especially if it was possible to confirm that the microscopic structure is the same as in my Girard Perregaux and Longines pieces. Also, of course, I'd love to have it proven that the Rolex confetti dials were made by Beyeler, as I'm almost certain that they must have been.
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