A precious journey

Keep it simple

The belief that the proximity to certain minerals, including precious stones, can lead to physical healing and material prosperity is still strong among a section of Chinese people, though nowadays, many of them prefer to wear said minerals inside their watches rather than as a piece of jewelry.

The trend makes complete sense, according to Sakura Tomita, gemologist, jewelry designer and founder of the Hong Kong brand Sakura Jewellery. She reminds us that minerals being highly fragile "are better protected by a sapphire glass cover of a watch and will likely last longer than if they were worn as beads in a necklace".

Swiss brands like Rolex and Omega are among the watch manufacturers using meteorites on the dials of their products. Rolex is also known for using malachite on watch dials, while Piaget often makes use of lapis lazuli. The newest addition to Louis Vuitton's Escale collection comes with a black onyx dial with a Widmansttten pattern - a distinctive crisscross design created as a result of the crystallization of iron and nickel to form an alloy.

Closer to home, the Aura collection recently launched by the Hong Kong watch brand Urban Time Imagination (UTI) includes watches that come with white jade, onyx, charoite, jasper, labradorite, lazurite, rose quartz, Australian jade, malachite and tiger eye dials. According to the brand's founder, Hysan Kong, the last two minerals have proved to be the most popular among Hong Kong customers.

UTI also has products in which the minerals remain hidden behind the watch dial.

"Chinese men often wear crystals threaded into a necklace so that the stone is in contact with their skin to attract love and prosperity as well as ensure spiritual protection," Kong says. "But sometimes you want to be subtle and don't want people to know that you are trying to attract money. That's why we chose to insert mineral plates behind the dial of our Aura watches."

Kong says that his customers simply love a malachite watch, as the mineral is associated with health and happiness in Chinese culture. "We source these stones from Myanmar and have them cut at our facility on the Chinese mainland. It can be difficult to cut a piece that has the perfect striped, or circular, pattern without scratches, so the fail rate is rather high," he says. Much of the tiger eye, white jade lepidocrocite, rose quartz and obsidian used in UTI watches, however, are sourced from the Chinese mainland.

In Hong Kong, most people buy minerals either because they are making an investment or for spiritual reasons. The former group comprises seasoned investors who can shell out substantial sums of money to buy their wares from reputed mines. As for the rest, it seems the tradition of wearing a piece of mineral with the supposed power to attract love, health and wealth is here to stay, though it may not be worn in traditional ways.