Chameleon Watch by ArtyA

Color-changing cases are now a reality!

Transforming watches that play with darkness and light are nothing new but they've relied on tritium and luminescent material up until now. No one has gone as far as ArtyA. Yvan Arpa launched the chameleon watch with a case that changes color when going from sunlight to artificial light.

This impressive effect was achieved by using innovative material which hadn't been applied to watchmaking before. That's Nano-Sapphire: a polycrystalline material with a chemical composition based on two main oxides – aluminum oxide and silicon oxide (SiO2 and Al2O3). 

The magic happens when the Nano-Sapphire synthesizes at a temperature of 1700°C. Its creators saw potential applications for the material in the jewelry and watchmaking industries.  ArtyA has already gone ahead and pioneered its use in watchmaking.

Nano-Sapphire's key property is its ability to change color. One of the versions of ArtyA Purity Tourbillon Chameleon has a pink case that turns green when exposed to artificial light. There's just one condition: the lamp's color temperature should be at least 6500 K on the Kelvin scale, which is a cold bright white color. 

The collection is expected to welcome other chameleons with different color transitions. All of them will be unique pieces. Another watch unveiled last year called ArtyA Shams Chameleon changes color from green in artificial light to blue in natural light.

The innovative case serves as a beautiful frame for the novelty's movement — transparency suggests the watchmakers have something worth showing off. In this case, the appearance of the ArtyA Purity Tourbillon Chameleon watch is shaped by the movement's architecture.

It's an extremely minimal caliber with a large flying tourbillon at 9 o'clock, which measures 17 mm in diameter. ArtyA has calculated that their 17-mm tourbillon is 50% bigger than the majority of existing tourbillons, although it's still slimmer than examples such as the 27-mm tourbillon carriage used in the Maximus Tourbillon by Kerbedanz.

This isn't the only unusual spec for a traditional tourbillon movement — it runs at a frequency of 4 Hz compared to the typical 2-3 Hz. The ArtyA Purity Tourbillon Chameleon has a 70-hour power reserve ensured by the two barrels to the right of the tourbillon. The case measures 46 mm in diameter.