Sodalite is a deep blue mineral shot through with white veining, and the veining is the reason it appears on watch dials at all. A uniform blue can be achieved with lacquer, enamel or paint at a fraction of the difficulty, so a maker choosing natural stone is choosing the pattern rather than the colour, and sodalite delivers a pattern that cannot be designed. Each slice carries its own arrangement of veins, so no two dials are alike and none of them could have been drawn in advance. This reference is the only one in its case group executed in white gold rather than ceramic, at 41 mm. Sodalite is also comparatively soft as dial materials go, which means slices have to be cut thicker than a mineral dial would ideally be and then supported carefully in the case. That thickness has consequences for how the dial sits relative to the hands and the markers, and it is one of the reasons stone dials are more difficult to engineer than they are to admire. Very few houses cut their own stone dials for that reason, and the ones that do treat the operation as a specialism rather than as an extension of dial making.
The case is white gold in the Code 11.59 construction, round when seen from above and octagonal through the middle section, with hollowed lugs welded to the case band rather than machined as part of it. That architecture gives the case many more edges than a conventional round one, and each is finished with an alternation between brushed and polished surfaces that changes as the watch moves. White gold is the correct metal beneath a blue stone, since a warm case would push the blue towards green at every boundary and would fight the cool white of the veining. The dial is natural sodalite with a matching blue inner bezel closing the outer edge and white gold stick hands crossing it. The strap arrangement is worth noting, since the watch is supplied on blue textured rubber with calfskin lining and a white gold three-blade folding clasp, with an additional blue alligator strap included, so the reference can be presented formally or informally without any modification. Supplying two straps of that kind is also a statement about the intended use. A watch delivered on rubber with alligator in the box is expected to spend time in both registers, and it removes the usual friction of having a second strap made and fitted afterwards.
The function set is a flying tourbillon with hours and minutes. Flying means the cage is supported from below only, with no upper bridge, so it appears to sit unsupported in the aperture and nothing crosses it as it turns. The construction is more demanding than a bridged tourbillon because the entire rotating assembly is cantilevered from one side, and it exists for a visual reason rather than a functional one. Winding is automatic, which means a rotor and a winding train have to share a movement already built around the cage. There is no date and no seconds display. On a stone dial that absence is structural rather than stylistic, since cutting an aperture into sodalite would sever the veining at whatever point it fell and would leave a hard edge in a material whose whole appeal is continuity. The tourbillon aperture is the exception, having been designed into the dial rather than cut through a finished one, so the stone is worked around a known opening from the outset and the veining is arranged relative to it rather than being interrupted by it.
Four references share the 26396 case and they differ only in dial material. The other three are black ceramic, carrying black onyx, a smoked green enamelled aventurine and a meteorite slice offered as a limited edition. This is the only white gold example and the only one where the case metal is a precious one, which changes the character of the watch considerably. The ceramic references read as technical objects, while a white gold case with a stone dial and an alligator strap available reads as a dress watch that happens to contain a tourbillon. Sodalite also appears at 38 mm on the 26665OR in rose gold, so a buyer who wants this specific stone has a choice of two sizes and two metals. That is unusual within the collection, where a given dial material generally appears once, and it means the sodalite references can be compared against each other rather than only against the rest of their case groups.
The buyer for this reference wants a tourbillon that can be worn to a dinner rather than to a meeting, and the two straps are the collection acknowledging that directly. Blue sodalite is also the most conventional of the four dials in the case group, which is a recommendation rather than a criticism, since a collector buying a natural stone dial for the first time is generally looking for one they will still want in ten years rather than one that startles. The white veining supplies enough variation to hold attention without the dial becoming a pattern in its own right. Between this reference and the 38 mm rose gold version the choice is about temperature and size rather than about the stone. Both are worth seeing together if the material is what drew the buyer in, since the same veining reads quite differently against a cold case and a warm one, and the smaller reference concentrates the pattern where the larger one spreads it. Sodalite is also the only material the collection has chosen to offer twice, which is a reasonable indication of how it has been received. Materials that appear once are experiments, and materials that return are decisions.
