I’ve known Ming Thein for decades now. He is a true enthusiast and does things the right way. So I’m honored to offer one of the coolest Ming pieces yet, the Mosaic — a sold out limited edition. Here are the details straight from the brand website:

The MING Mosaic becomes production reality in our latest flagship: the 20.11.

All you can eat plus a whole chicken

We took everything we have in the design arsenal and threw it into our new flagship and daily wearer: it is the kind of watch you can and want to wear almost all of the time, but also projects something a little bit special. It debuts design tweaks reflecting our Special Projects Cave logo at 12, sapphire hands and Barenia leather straps.

The Mosaic: a 3D chessboard

Of course, the star of the show is the Mosaic dial itself: 2,650 squares of varying opacity, each formed with a linear diffraction pattern and etched with a high-power femtosecond laser on three different levels within the sapphire crystal dial. This process was developed in collaboration with DM Surfaces SA of St. Imier and has been in the works for the better part of two years.

Actual production is tricky as the process is very sensitive to crystal quality and not all sapphire is equal. Tiny, near invisible inclusions within the crystal structure can cause the entire dial to shatter as a large amount of energy is being focused on a very small area during lasering. Though we use a 1.30mm thick optical grade crystal as the base blank; yield remains low and limits this dial to flagship applications only.

Depending on ambient light, the Mosaic can turn from invisible to a prominent chessboard and we chose to use a dark movement finish to provide a contrasting background, whilst adding visual texture. At night, light from the fully charged HyCeram in the sapphire dial will reflect off the Mosaic and result in a soft glow.

Micro-rotor, rebooted

The 20.11 is powered by the Schwarz-Etienne for MING Cal. ASE 200.2, with micro-rotor winding. The finishing is now matte-blasted with a black DLC coating and contrasting diamond-cut anglage. It has a power reserve of approximately 86 hours and is wound bidirectionally by a micro-rotor made of sintered tungsten.

Attention to the little details

For the first time on any MING, we use sapphire crystal hands with HyCeram for legibility in all light conditions. The same HyCeram is used on the luminous indices of the dial sapphire. To add even more visual texture to the rear, the inner bezel surrounding the movement is made of titanium and machined with a Clous-de-Paris pattern and DLC coated.

The 20.11 is completed with a pair of handmade straps from Jean Rousseau Paris, a leather travel pouch by Studio Koji Sato, and a 700-lumen Nitecore LED torch for charging the HyCeram.