I kept going back to the Sero Signature more than I expected, and that’s a huge compliment. It’s one of those watches that only starts to make sense once you begin placing it against other things you already know, once you start measuring it mentally against references that defined this category in the first place. Not to say that it’s « du vu et revu » as in something we’ve seen before, but to hammer down my point that there’s a clear respect of the traditional way of doing things.

Because whether Sero intended it or not, this watch lives in a space that’s already been written. You don’t approach Breguet numerals, a slim manually wound profile, and a restrained case without inevitably entering the orbit of watches like the Patek Philippe Calatrava ref. 96, the Vacheron Constantin ref. 6073, or even more modern reinterpretations like the F.P. Journe Chronomètre Bleu. Different price brackets, different intentions, but the same underlying language. Again, a compliment.

And that’s where the Signature becomes interesting. Not because it competes with those watches (it doesn’t) but because it clearly understands the framework they established.

The case proportions are the first indicator. 37.5mm is the easy number to read (sweet!), but the 46.5mm lug-to-lug is where the watch really positions itself. It stretches just enough to avoid that compact, almost fragile stance you get with smaller Calatrava-style pieces. It wears more like certain oversized references from the 40s, where lugs carried more visual weight and extended the watch across the wrist. It’s a subtle shift, but it changes the entire posture of the watch.

The 9.5mm thickness is exactly where it should be, and that’s largely due to the Sellita SW210-1. There’s nothing mind blowing about that movement, but from a construction standpoint, it’s coherent. Around 3.35mm in height, manual winding, stable architecture. It allows the case to remain slim without forcing the watch into ultra-thin territory, which often introduces compromises in durability or water resistance; AKA having to take it off to wash your hand. The 100 meters rating here is not just a spec, it tells you the case has been built with actual use in mind. 

But to get into the main part, the dial is where Sero takes a more deliberate position.

Engraving the numerals directly into the dial instead of printing or applying them changes the reading entirely. From a horological perspective, you move from surface decoration to taking away from the material itself. The numerals exist as negative space, and that means light behaves differently. You don’t get the crisp contrast of printed lacquer or the shadow line of applied markers. Instead, you get something more variable, more dependent on angle and intensity.

This is closer, in spirit, to how traditional guilloché dials interact with light, although achieved through machining rather than hand-turned patterns. The vertical brushing underneath adds a directional grain, which keeps the dial from becoming too static while maintaining control over reflections. It’s a measured approach. 

The consistency of execution is what stands out here. The chemin de fer, the numerals, even the signature text all follow the same engraved logic. That avoids the common issue where different techniques compete on the same dial, printed tracks next to applied markers next to stamped logos. Here, everything is resolved within the same surface.

The handset is another area where the watch holds together, and honestly the first thing I noticed. Heat-blued spade hands, correctly dimensioned, doing exactly what they’re supposed to do. The minute hand reaches the track with precision, which is something you’d expect, but not something you always get. The hour hand sits cleanly within the numeral ring, and the seconds hand remains visually light. 

It’s basic watchmaking discipline, but it’s often where watches lose coherence.

Looking at the different dial configurations, the variations don’t try to reinvent the watch. The silver and champagne dials stay closest to classical references, where the engraving becomes more subtle and the watch reads almost like a study in restraint, to be a little more poetic. The blue dial increases contrast and sharpens the overall presence, pushing it slightly closer to contemporary tastes.

The red dial is the outlier, but it still respects the underlying architecture, which keeps it from feeling disconnected. A little different, but different strokes for different folks.

Now, where the Signature really needs to be placed is in its price segment. At around €1,100 to €1,200, it sits in a very competitive space. You’re looking at watches like the Nomos Tangente, the Longines Heritage Classic, vintage Omegas…

Most of those watches take a different route. Nomos focuses on Bauhaus minimalism and in-house calibres, Longines leans heavily into archival design, vintage Omega Genèves are iconic and reliable. Sero doesn’t really sit directly with any of them. It’s closer to what smaller independent or collector-driven brands have been trying to do in recent years, tightening classical codes rather than reinterpreting them.

That’s also where the watch finds a bit of cultural relevance. There’s been a clear shift in the last few years, especially among younger collectors, away from oversized, overly expressive pieces toward something more controlled. Not necessarily vintage, but informed by it. The Signature fits into that movement as a very clear participant.

That doesn’t make it perfect. The “Signature” text still feels slightly more present than it needs to be when you look at how low-key everything else is, and the longer lug-to-lug will not work for every wrist. But when you place it where it actually belongs, within that €1,000 segment, against watches that often get one or two things right and miss the rest, the Signature holds together in a way that’s harder to dismiss.

What was interesting, and something that came up in conversation with Sergino, the founder, after I shared my thoughts, is that none of this is accidental. The positioning, the proportions, even the way the watch sits in this slightly uncomfortable but very deliberate space, it’s all been thought through.

And that also reflects in how they’re bringing it to market. The initial presale starts just under the €1,000 mark, with the first pieces at €899 before taxes, then €999 during the two-week window, before settling at €1,199 retail. It’s a detail worth mentioning because, at that earlier entry point, the watch shifts slightly in how you evaluate it. You’re no longer just comparing it to its immediate peers, you’re looking at it against a much broader field, and in that context, the level of attention given to proportions, dial execution, and overall coherence becomes harder to overlook.

If I were to discribe it in 1 word, I’d say traditional.

Check them out here.

By definition, a Pièce Unique or Unique piece is a “Watch produced in a single example, usually created on commission or for special events.”
So when Dr. Abdulaziz first sent me a photo of his Pièce Unique in his hand: A warm, amber dial with four horses frozen mid-stride, I felt the same thing I get when a good story starts to rearrange itself in my head.
I know enough about watchmaking to recognise a thoughtful execution: 38mm, 9mm thick, domed sapphire, an NH35 automatic inside, the sort of compact, honest package that lets a dial do the talking. But I didn’t yet know the whole story behind the art on that face, or how that art had grown from friendship into a little business of feeling and craft.

Arnaud, the maker behind L’Artisan d’Horlogerie, is precisely the kind of person who makes that possible. His Instagram and site show what he’s been quietly obsessed with for years: stone and fossil dials, tiny landscapes, and textures cut from geological time. You’ll see dinosaur-bone slices, lapis, tiger eye, and other unusual materials rendered into round micro-portraits for the wrist. It’s all there in his online presence: process reels, close-ups of banded stone, and the occasional prototype coming to life.

That’s the practical side. The thing that actually hooked Abdulaziz, and kept me listening to their story, was the personal. When they spoke about the two watches they made together, they weren’t riffing on lume or bevel angles. They were talking about family, memory, and a visual language that tied someone to a place. One of the two dials is this horse tableau on an amber field, warm, primitive, and somehow ceremonial. The other is a cooler, vivid composition: a blue field with three horses in the foreground, a building in the background, and a cluster of palm-like forms that read like memory and geography layered in paint.

Arnaud made both dials by hand, starting from sketches and material hunts. The materials matter: Arnaud’s work has always been about finding unusual raw things and coaxing them into wearable art, dinosaur bone, and tiger-iron pieces that are fragile, wasteful to cut, and breathtaking when they survive the process. The result is always a one-off or a tiny run. That’s the point: they’re intimate, uneven, and irreplaceable. You can see this aesthetic across his feeds and shop; the stone dials are the signature.

Abdulaziz’s two watches are a study in contrast and complement. The amber-hued dial reads like an heirloom: ochres and rusts arranged into silhouettes of four horses that could be carved out of a textile or painted on a fresco. It sits inside a compact, conservative case, 38mm across, 9mm thin, topped with a domed sapphire crystal, which keeps the drama on the face where it belongs. The movement is the NH35, a practical, reliable automatic chosen because the case couldn’t accommodate Arnaud’s newer, slimmer micro-rotor ideas; it keeps the piece honest and wearable, a little utilitarian so that the dial’s voice is never competing with technical showmanship.

The second dial is story-driven in a way that the first one only hints at. Here, there are three horses again, but their colours are saturated: a red, a blue, and a golden figure, placed in front of an architectural element and a palm or floral motif that reads like a cultural emblem. In their conversations, Abdulaziz explained how the four horses motif, which appears in other parts of the project’s design universe, ties back to family roles and cultural identity: four siblings, different personalities, a shared set of values; the national museum and the desert; a grandfather’s shop and a father’s memory. These are visuals that mean something, not just pretty pictures. They’re personal heraldry translated into tiny, circular paintings on stone. Those ideas are in the audio: the dials are cultural maps, and the watches are the vehicles carrying them. (You can see photos that Abdulaziz shared; his images make clear there are two distinct designs, each treated with care and storytelling intent.)

What I find compelling is how the technical choices bow to that storytelling. Arnaud could have chosen to over-engineer: exotic movements, showy cases, impossible finishing. Instead, he deliberately used a modest case profile and a dependable NH35 movement for Abdulaziz’s piece, leaving the dial to become the centre of attention. That decision, simplicity in service of meaning, says as much about the maker as the imagery itself. Arnaud’s Instagram and site show this pattern: craft that elevates unusual materials without overcomplicating the watch’s practicality.

There is another layer: how the friendship shaped the object. This began as friends riffing on ideas, not as a commission with a spec sheet. Abdulaziz didn’t walk in and demand a logo or a trend-driven hue; he brought memory, symbols and a trust that allowed Arnaud to interpret. In the studio the conversations became sketches, then scaled maquettes, then dial slices cut and polished until the images held the weight of the story. Arnaud told me about the losses in the cutting process (especially with fossils and delicate stones) and the way each success felt like a small miracle. He’s an obsessive with a craftsman’s patience, the kind of guy who will cut three different rough stones just to find the one that carries the exact red or banding he wants.

And there was beauty in their process: Abdulaziz’s cultural references, the museum’s architecture, the family horses, the desert colours, found a gentle interpreter in Arnaud’s hands. The watches became portraits of a friendship that had already started to move into business, a slow pivot from collectors’ chat to a real, collaborative practice. That transition felt natural because both men value the same rare thing: honesty. They were not trying to make a marketable halo piece. They were trying to make something honest for both of them.

There’s a practical lesson here, too: independent watchmaking is not only about inventing a movement or photogenic numerals. It’s about translating life into objects. One of the watches uses a humble, robust NH35 inside a compact 9mm-thick case with a domed sapphire, choices that ensure daily wear without compromising the soul of the design. The other dial speaks through imagery and colour, architecture, horses, personal iconography, and the watch becomes a conversation starter rather than a billboard.

If you look at Arnaud’s social footprint, you’ll see how this work fits a broader practice. L’Artisan is already known for stone dials and tiny series that sing because they are rare and tactile. The pieces for Abdulaziz sit comfortably in that lineage: singular, narrative-driven, slightly eccentric in the best way.

I’ve always thought the best collaborations are friendships that have learned to work together. This one feels that way: a collector and a maker who learned each other’s languages, who let small practicalities (case size, movement choice) bend to a larger aesthetic conversation, and who let cultural memory sit at the centre of the watch. When Abdulaziz wears the amber dial, you see something more than a timekeeper on his wrist; you see a small, wearable archive of family, time, and place. When he shows the blue, populated dial in its box, it reads as a miniature mural, a story paused in a second.

In a world that applauds shouty limited editions and technical flexes, making yours represents another type of horological superiority. They’re the sort of pieces that age in meaning, not just in patina. They are the product of a friendship that grew into a practice, and when the maker posts the cutting process on Instagram, or when Abdulaziz shares a wrist shot in a white thobe, you feel the lineage: two people making time into something that actually says something.

If you want to see the work yourself, Arnaud’s posts are a living sketchbook: raw stones, rehearsal sketches, and slow reveals of dials that survived the cut. But here’s the thing I keep thinking about: you don’t need to scroll to understand why this matters.