Two grounds on this reference are set with an even ring of diamonds and their distributions have almost nothing in common. Rose is locked to Everose in every form and reaches three case sizes. White mother-of-pearl reaches every case material the collection makes except plain steel, and every size from 28 mm through 40, appearing on sixteen references at this diameter alone. One ground belongs to this metal and this metal only; the other belongs everywhere and happens to be here. They carry the identical treatment and the identical description. This variant is the widely offered one, in a 31 mm case of steel and Everose gold under a fluted bezel, on an Oyster bracelet.
Shell is the ground that most obviously earns the plain ring. It is cut from a natural disc, sliced thin and laminated onto a metal plate, and the surface refracts light through its laminations and returns it broken into pale blues, greens and pinks that shift as the wrist turns. Adding a numeral to that would compete with the material and, more practically, would sit against a background that differs from one example of the reference to the next, so a numeral falling where the nacre happens to be brightest on one watch would read quite differently on another. Settings distributed evenly around the perimeter avoid the problem, since the outer edge of a shell disc is its most consistent region. The Everose of this construction sits in the fluted bezel, since fluting is never cut into steel, and everything else on the exterior is steel. There is a second argument for the plain ring that applies to this construction in particular. An Everose case is the warmest metal the collection makes, and a shell dial is the one ground that carries its own shifting warmth without belonging to any fixed temperature, so the two meet without either having to be adjusted for the other. A numeral would fix a point of gold on a surface that is already moving between warm and cool as the wrist turns, and the effect would be to date the dial to whatever the numeral happened to be sitting against.
At 31 mm the ground carries the identical arrangement on every case that receives it, all sixteen of them, whether solid Everose, solid white gold, solid yellow gold or any of the three steel and gold constructions. No case earns a variation and none is withheld one. That is unusual on a reference where chocolate is offered in two treatments and a buyer chooses between them, and it is the clearest instance here of a ground being drawn once and fitted everywhere without adjustment. The plate is pierced at each hour position and nowhere else, which matters because the disc is bonded across its whole area rather than seated at its edge and follows any deviation beneath it exactly. The movement is built to the case, self-winding, holding close to 55 hours off the wrist against roughly 70 at 36 mm. The aperture at three is the hardest element in the assembly and the one that separates a well-made shell dial from a poor one. Cutting a window through a laminated disc without chipping the edge is a different operation from cutting one in a metal plate, and the edge then has to be finished so it reads as intentional rather than as damage. On a dial whose appeal rests on an unbroken natural surface that single opening is the only visible interruption, and how cleanly it is executed decides whether the dial looks made or merely assembled.
What the two ring-set grounds on this watch demonstrate between them is that reach and treatment are decided separately. Rose is confined and receives the plain ring; shell is unconfined and receives the same. Chocolate, also confined to Everose, receives both the ring and the enlarged numeral. Silver, which cannot appear on this metal at all without stones, receives the ring. There is no relationship between how far a ground travels and what it is given when it arrives, and a buyer who expects the widely offered grounds to be the plainly treated ones will find the pattern does not hold. What determines the treatment appears to be the ground itself rather than its distribution: shell is left alone because the material is already doing the work, rose is left alone because a fixed numeral would fight a surface that changes with the light, and chocolate is given both because a dark warm ground supports either. Three different reasons producing two outcomes, and none of them derivable from how widely the dial is offered. The lesson for anyone reading across the range is that treatment follows from the material and its behavior rather than from the position a ground occupies in the catalogue, and the two are recorded in the same listing with no distinction drawn between them.
The argument for this configuration is that it puts the least predictable dial in the collection on a case that asks nothing of it. The Everose is confined to a bezel, the bracelet is the flattest available, and the ring of settings is the same arrangement the ground carries everywhere else, so the only variable on the watch is the disc itself, which will not match any other example of the reference. Collectors who choose it are buying the material rather than the configuration. Among the arrangements offered here it is the one where the written description carries the least information about what will actually arrive. Two examples on a counter will differ visibly from one another, and neither will resemble the photograph that sold them, which is a strange property for a watch to have and the reason the ground keeps its following. On an Everose case the effect is stronger still, since the warmest metal the collection makes gives the shell the widest range to move against.
