Perception Millésime 漩 Xuan

PERCEPTION 漩 (Xuán) is Atelier Wen’s Millésime edition for 2025 – a time-limited, community-driven release that marks the brand’s first use of stonework in a timepiece. Its natural pietersite dial, inspired by the visual and symbolic tradition of 山水盆景 (shānshuǐ pénjǐng), or mountain-water landscape gardens, replaces the collection’s hallmark hand-turned guilloché for something altogether more organic: a swirling, iridescent surface of blue, black, gold and brown that seems to shift and breathe with every movement of the wrist.

A natural pietersite dial

For the second year running, the Millésime arrives in the familiar silhouette of Perception – Atelier Wen’s integrated bracelet steel sports watch. But while the form remains, its visual centrepiece has been entirely reconsidered. Guilloché, which has defined every Perception since the collection’s debut in 2022, gives way here to something far more elemental: a dial crafted from natural pietersite.

A rare semi-precious stone found in only two known deposits – first in Namibia in 1962, and later in Henan, China, in 1966 – pietersite is distinguished by its swirling confluence of blue, black, gold and brown veins, a visual intensity born of its chaotic internal structure. Often called the “storm” or “tempest” stone, its iridescent surface shifts with the light in a manner that no engine-turned pattern could replicate.

The creation of the 漩 dial was a process of considerable craft and difficulty. Selecting suitable slabs of raw pietersite required painstaking curation, as natural inclusions frequently yield colour combinations less suited to the watch’s architectural reference. Once selected, each dial is wirecut by hand in a stonecraft workshop in Zhejiang, achieving the twelve individual cut-outs for Perception’s hour indices – a step that demands extraordinary precision given pietersite’s natural brittleness. The dials are then sent to polishers in Guangdong, where they must strike a careful balance: polishing the pietersite to a perfect sheen without compromising the stone’s structural integrity.

The landscape garden as architectural centrepiece

When Perception was first conceived, designer Alfred Chan drew inspiration from the visual language of traditional Chinese architecture – rooftop geometries reimagined as case and bracelet profiles, the structural logic of 榫卯 (sǔn mǎo) joinery translated into the dial’s four-layered construction, and the 石狮子 (shí shīzǐ), or stone guardian lion, presiding over the movement on the caseback.

For the 2025 Millésime, that architectural vocabulary is extended into a new register: the 盆景 (pén jǐng), or landscape garden. Far from decorative, these carefully composed worlds of rock, water and plant occupied the hearts of traditional Chinese compounds as cosmological centres – their arrangement governed by the principles of 风水 (fēng shuǐ), intended to invoke the five fundamental elements and channel spiritual flow, fortune and harmony into the surrounding space. More tangibly, they served as visual anchors, bringing balance to the compound and guiding the experience of the architecture that surrounded them.

Pietersite – known in Chinese as 风暴石 (fēng bào shí), or “storm stone” – was chosen for its natural resonance with the most classical form of such gardens: the 山水盆景 (shānshuǐ pénjǐng), or mountain-water landscape garden, which placed movement and flow at its heart through cascading water, mist and rock formation. Though the stone was only discovered in the 20th century, modern interpretations of 风水 hold it in high regard as an invocation of the water and metal elements. Its swirling depths seem to hold something of those miniature worlds in suspension – still, and yet perpetually in motion.

A love letter to the community

The Millésime was introduced in 2024 as a yearly, community-first release: a limited timepiece offered to Atelier Wen’s global family at priority, serving at once as a celebration of the year past and a canvas for the brand’s most experimental configurations. Each vintage is singular – it will not return.

2025 was a year of considerable significance for Atelier Wen: two new collections, an expanded schedule of global exhibitions and events, and a meaningfully broadened retail presence. None of it would have been possible without the community that has surrounded and sustained the brand. PERCEPTION 漩 (Xuán) is the brand’s response to that – a watch conceived in gratitude, and offered as a token of that relationship. Available between 28 January and 6 February 2026 (11:00 HKT, GMT+8), with the first 225 orders delivered in Q2 2026 and all subsequent orders fulfilled in Q4 2026, 漩 is time-limited by design. Like all Millésime editions before it, it will not return.

The integrated bracelet sports watch, refined

Beneath the stone, 漩 is thoroughly Perception. The case and bracelet are both hewn from 904L stainless steel – the same grade used in the finest Swiss sports watches – with contrasting surface treatments and individually chamfered bracelet links that reflect the exceptional attention to finish that defines the collection. At 40mm in diameter and 9.4mm in height including the crystal, it wears with the discreet authority the design demands.

At its heart is a customised, extra-thin Dandong Peacock SL1588A calibre, measuring just 3.4mm in height. Decorated with circular côtes de Genève, polished jewel and screw sinks, and heat-blued screws, it wears its finishing openly through a sapphire caseback window. The tungsten rotor, itself finished with circular côtes de Genève and black rhodium plating, delivers automatic winding with a power reserve of approximately 41 hours. Rigorously tested and certified by the Horological Research Institute of Light Industry (HRILI), and further adjusted in five positions and for temperature variation, the movement achieves an accuracy of ±10 seconds per day.

The hallmark of the Millésime – a subtle engraving of Atelier Wen’s logo on the caseback – confirms the edition’s provenance without proclamation. The bracelet tapers from 22mm at the case to 18mm at the clasp, reducing gradually in thickness from 3mm to 2.6mm, and incorporates Atelier Wen’s proprietary patent-pending on-the-fly micro- adjustment system and telescopic deployant blade clasp for the kind of daily wearability the design demands.