Dangerously Beautiful

Rado, the watch brand known as ‘master of materials’ for the way it has revolutionised traditional watchmaking, has released its final piece in their innovative 2019 Designer Series: the Rado True Thinline Toge Limited Edition.

The new timepiece was created in collaboration with Japanese food artist and designer Ayako Suwa. Through her company, Food Creation, the artist has developed a distinctive ‘conceptual food’ style, where food is used as an ultimate, sensuous communication tool. She portrays human feelings and emotions with food and allows it and its taste to create new experiences. She uses sensuous food as a means of expression to appeal to instinct and the subconscious mind and has created works that lead to new questions and discovery.

For the True Thinline design, Ayako took inspiration from the famous tetraodontidae, or ‘pufferfish’. The name of the watch, Toge, means ‘thorn’. Thorns found on the stems of roses accentuate their beauty. Pufferfish, have a countless number of thorn-like spines and are known to be highly toxic, dangerous fish, which should not be consumed unless prepared properly. Despite the danger, the Japanese consider pufferfish a delicacy. Are they delicious because of the spines or the toxin? Are roses beautiful because of the thorns? Or is beauty the reason they developed thorns?

Ayako believes that people gravitate toward pufferfish and roses instinctively, despite their toxin or thorns because of their fine taste and flawless beauty. The idea unites Ayako’s passion for nature-driven design and her strong sense of Japanese culture.

Her aim was to accentuate the intrinsic beauty of the person who wears the watch by opting for a dial featuring a distinctive ‘thorn’ or ‘spike’ effect and thorn-shaped hands. The gold hands were created by scanning the actual spines of a pufferfish, and the 3D effect dial reminiscent of the pufferfish’s spiny texture are a reminder of its deadly poison and the insatiable appetite of humans who want to eat it.

Speaking about the collaboration with Ayako Suwa, Rado CEO Matthias Breschan said: “When we saw Ayako’s work with Food Creation, we were absolutely intrigued about how she uses food to express or evoke feelings and emotions through design. We are very excited that she has managed to translate her passion for food to the micro scale of our True Thinline collection."

This special timepiece, the True Thinline Toge in polished black high-tech ceramic is available in a limited edition of 1,001 pieces, each with a special ‘Toge’ case back with engraving in Ayako’s own handwriting, at the price of THB 66,300.

RADO is available at leading department stores and nationwide retailers. For more information, please contact +66 2 610 0200.