Cultural Art
Bringing Cultural Arts into Horology
FAYY aims to bring Chinese cultural arts into horology, allowing traditional crafts to find new expression through watchmaking. Each project begins with a clearly defined cultural idea and develops through close collaboration with the artists, artisans, and inheritors whose knowledge gives the work its depth. Through horology, these living traditions are not merely referenced, but given new material form.
Each timepiece becomes a bridge between heritage and time.
Featured Craft
Lai Sijia & Chinese Inner Painting
Inner painting is the art of painting in reverse on the inside of small transparent vessels. The image is built from front to back with a fine curved brush: the elements closest to the viewer are painted first, while colours, shadows, and details are layered behind them.
Every composition must be fully understood before the first stroke, because once it is placed, it cannot be modified.
For master artisan Lai Sijia, a third-generation inner-painting artist and the sole recognized representative of the craft in Guangdong Province, each work begins with the spirit of the scene. In painting Manman, the joy and rhythm of the moment had to begin at the mouth first, because the entire image depends on that frozen gesture.
"Even the leaf has a life of its own.
If Manman is frozen mid-movement, the leaf is too."
Painting on sapphire demanded a new discipline. The crystal is precision-sandblasted rather than ground like a traditional snuff bottle, creating a more difficult surface to paint on, yet one capable of remarkable detail. The hardest part remains 一氣呵成: each full layer must be completed in one unbroken flow.
Artists' Intro Video
Two Artists, One Timepiece
The Manman Panda watch brings together panda culture design and Chinese inner painting.