Bucherer 1888 luxury watch store
Precision enginering in stone
Confusion, Moorcroft and Nero Marquina display cases
the client
Carl F Bucherer is a Swiss watch and fine jewellery company whose stores attract an international clientele.
the project
The Covent Garden store was remodelled as part of a programme of refitting the company’s London outlets. TMD was the principal designer and project manager for this store.
stoneCIRCLE supplied and fitted all of the stone for the flooring, borders, portal frames, wall cladding and pieces of display furniture.
The marble used was sourced from all over the world: Crema Marfil and Nero Marquina from Spain, Calacatta from Italy, Sodalite and Confusion from Brazil, and rare Moorcroft marble from Britain.
the challenges
One of the challenges of the project was that some of the marble had to be fixed onto curved surfaces, in addition to standard panels in varying sizes and thicknesses. To achieve this, curved borders in small segments were bonded to a support net which allowed them to be held in place, with vein matching ensuring that there was an interrupted flow of the pattern between segments.
Cylindrical display stand made of a single block of Moorcroft marble
Confusion marble wall panelling and Moorcroft marble cylinder ready for shipping.
Sodalite wall panels ready to ship
Hand-polishing the Moorcroft marble display stand
An issue that will be familiar to all stonemasons was how to produce and transport a cylinder-shaped display made from a single block of Moorcroft marble. The block weighed 750 kg before we started to work on it. Machining reduced the weight to around 400 kg, but this was still too heavy to move from the delivery van into the shop. The final weight after machining a second time was 250 kg, making it possible for four people to move it on a bespoke wooden frame.
project details
client: Carl F Bucherer
architect: Emulsion Architects, QuinnRoss Consultants
project manager: TMD
contractor: TC&D construction
materials: Calacatta, Crema Marfil, Confusion, Moorcroft, Nero Marquina, Sodalite