Roger Dubuis recently unveiled a trio of its Excalibur 42 Automatic with special stone dials — mother-of-pearl, onyx and lapis lazuli.  Each piece is issued in a limited series of 188 each.  Lapis lazuli, pictured above, is my favorite of the trio, with the onyx model a close second.  The nice thing here is that the very simple design of the 42mm dial, with only 2 hands, provides a largely unobstructed view of the beautiful gemstones.  A closer look, including a look at the superb micro-rotor powered RD622 movement, on the jump.

Roger Dubuis Excalibur 42 Automatic

Limited edition 188 pieces in each of Lapis Lazuli, Onyx and MOP Dial

lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli is regarded by many people around the world as the stone of friendship and truth. The name is composed from ‘lapis’, the Latin word for stone, and ‘azula’, which comes from the Arabic and means blue.   The deep blue stone was already popular thousands of years ago among the people of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome. It is said that the legendary city of Ur on the Euphrates plied a keen lapis lazuli trade as long ago as the fourth millennium B.C., the material coming to the land of the two great rivers from the famous deposits in Afghanistan.

onyx

Onyx was very popular with the ancient Greeks and Romans.  The name comes from the Greek word ‘onyx’, which means nail or claw. It has a long history of use for hardstone carving and jewellery, where it is usually cut as a cabochon or into beads. Sardonyx is a variant in which the colored bands are shades of red rather than black.  Black onyx is perhaps the most famous variety, but is not as common as onyx with colored bands.

mother-of-pearl

Roger Dubuis RD622 Calibre

Self-winding movement by a micro-rotor, Geneva Seal