fter two years marked by creations inspired by haute couture and textiles, Taos opens a new chapter. For 2026, the Geneva-based brand chooses a theme as universal as it is inexhaustible: the forms of nature as creative territory. Since its founding, Taos has established itself in the realm of extraordinary watchmaking: a brand for lovers of beauty, delicacy, poetry – and the infinite variety of emotions that master hands can bring to life.

Born in Geneva, Taos signs only unique pieces, just a few per year. Beyond stylistic effect lies a quiet pursuit of perfection: each piece is a creation in its own right, crafted without compromise by Geneva’s finest artisans, in time unconstrained. Each creation demands more than 1,000 hours of work to produce an object that transcends the status of timekeeper.

Passionate Geneva watchmaker and CEO of Taos, Olivier Gaud, brings these works to life alongside Atelier Olivier Vaucher in Geneva and its 40 artisans, masters of more than fifteen Métiers d’Art—from engraving and enamel to stone marquetry, gem-setting, and the particularly advanced art of movement decoration.

Two unique pieces embody this exploration in 2026, each in its own way: Genèse, a mineral immersion, a unique interpretation of geological matter, and Odonata, a fantastical vision, where flora and fauna converge.

From the outset, Taos has been animated by one ambition: to push the boundaries of watchmaking Métiers d’Art, and to reveal what matter, fire, hand, and time can produce at their most demanding.

Earth – its many strata, its eons of memory – finds expression in Genèse, a profoundly mineral piece. Conceived as a cross-section through rock, the dial dives into geological depth, where fractures, textures, and densities evoke both geometric study and the long history of the Earth’s layers.

Masculine, crafted in 18K white gold, Genèse brings exceptional techniques into dialogue within a deliberately architectural composition where each zone asserts its own personality.

The dial orchestrates a rare richness of mineral textures, like a geological cross-section – an organic landscape composed of juxtaposed strata, compacted and slowly patinated by time. It brings together, within a single composition, exceptional virtuosity: engraving under enamel, under-fired enamel, and stone marquetry, all executed to the highest level of precision. Black jade and blue agate reveal their full depth – their nuances, veins, reliefs, and that intimate vibration unique to minerals – through a remarkable interplay of matte, polished, and textured finishes that catch the light in ever-changing ways.

By alternating shadowed and light-catching surfaces, the dial creates a miniature rock landscape where reliefs hollow out, respond to each other, and shift with the light. This effect, born from deconstructed engraving covered with transparent Grand Feu enamel, evokes the full force of dense, powerful rock – suggesting geological layers, breaks, matter under tension.

In the lighter zones, the artisans used a rare approach: under-fired enamel, whose deliberately restrained firing preserves the grain’s texture. The surface retains a more raw, more organic sensation – like stone resisting erosion.

The Genèse dial uses traditional stone marquetry: large pockets carved to receive each small piece of stone cut to the micron, allowing perfect adjustment – essential for the pattern’s precision and the ensemble’s coherence.

The movement – as always at Taos – extends the dial. Genèse inaugurates a new geometric decoration, developed specifically for this piece. Like an artist before a blank canvas, the engraver works the raw brass by hand: a pure artistic gesture, made possible by mutual trust among the different artisans.

On the bridges, as on each component, the work is monumental: between 100 and 150 hours of hand engraving to echo the mineral theme and the dial’s lines. Case alternating polished and satin finishes, white gold hands bevelled and hand-polished – finishes that complete the whole with rare precision. A unique piece, at once landscape and sculpture.

Odonata takes its name from the dragonfly family. But here, it is not naturalistic representation: it is vision. A waking dream where the dial composes a hybrid world at the border of plant and animal, where forms mingle, respond, and metamorphose.

What appear to be flowers are actually wings. An enchantingly surreal microcosm, imagined as a Garden of Eden: a secret pond where light glides over transparencies, catches the reliefs, and reveals unsuspected depths.

Crafted in 18K white gold with sky blues, mauves, and iridescent white, and presented in a case (bezel and lugs) set with diamonds, Odonata presents itself as a living, vibrant scene in constant motion.

This is the most ambitious dial Taos has ever undertaken – and among the most complex ever realised by the Geneva atelier. Each year, the bar is raised – and Odonata embodies that philosophy: stimulating the workshop and mobilising it at the highest level, always pushing limits, and embracing complexity, not as a selling point, but as a creative imperative.

Dial thickness cannot exceed approximately 1.4 mm – and, in practice, rarely exceeds 1.3 mm – in order to accommodate the hands, the sapphire crystal, and ensure proper integration with the movement and case. Yet the Odonata dial is built on several levels, creating extreme constraints on volumes.

Odonata superimposes and interweaves a multitude of Métiers d’Art: on a hand-engraved white gold base sculpted in high relief sit appliques of translucent paillonné enamel of dazzling brilliance, touches set with diamonds, and mother-of-pearl elements. On an upper level, plique-à-jour elements of translucent Grand Feu enamel cover certain zones of the dial – like miniature stained glass – letting light traverse the dial and reveal, with each movement, its changing depths.

Plique-à-jour is an enamelling technique of rare delicacy, akin to miniature stained glass: coloured and translucent enamel is fired without apparent metal backing, allowing light to pass directly through the material. The effect is one transparency – its appearance shifting with angle and daylight, revealing the brilliance of the paillons (the tiny metal foils beneath the enamel), the iridescent softness of mother-of-pearl, and the depth of engraved metal.

With each movement of the wrist, colours ignite, dim, vibrate, as if the dial were breathing. At the centre of each dragonfly, Taos integrates a flat ornamental stone as a point of balance in this architecture of reliefs.

Odonata is not merely complex; it is a living piece—one that evolved throughout its creation. The effects of superposition and transparency made the final result difficult to anticipate. Enamellers, engravers, gem-setters, and the creative team worked toward a shared vision, understanding that the piece would reveal itself only progressively.

Collective, organic work, where the project remained malleable until the last moment. It’s an incremental act of creative faith, step by step, always adjusting, refining, until all is perfectly aligned.

This freedom exists only because Taos works beyond all immediate commercial constraints: no compromises, no race against time. Only the demand for beauty, and the quest for perfection.

In Genèse as in Odonata, colour is never a simple aesthetic choice. It is language, construction, a delicate balance between opacity and transparency, brilliance and matteness, depth and light. At Taos, chromaticity is a discipline in itself: an orchestration that demands as much precision as engraving or enamel firing – and ultimately amplifies the piece’s emotional resonance.

Odonata houses the movement first introduced with Euphorie, also a unique piece, with the same decorative approach – an extension of the dial: an interior of round, soft lines, as poetic as the scene that unfolds on the face.

This is the movement that animates every Taos creation. Under the supervision of Olivier Gaud, passionate watchmaker and CEO of Taos, Swiss movement maker Télôs created the exclusive calibre VOP318 at Taos’s express request: automatic winding, offering a comfortable power reserve of approximately 72 hours.

Its initial specifications contained only one constraint truly off the beaten path: the surface of its bridges had to offer space entirely dedicated to the most elaborate engraving possible. Thicknesses, shapes, cutouts – everything designed for the burin that would traverse these few millimetres in diameter.

Thus, the inner depths of each watch match the visual feast on the dial side. Delivered raw, the movement parts are individually hand-engraved, bevelled, and satin-brushed at Atelier Olivier Vaucher, creating patterns inspired by the collection’s theme. The oscillating weight circulates hidden under the case back, and its arms, too, are bevelled and satin-finished in the finest watchmaking tradition. Engraving a single complete calibre requires more than 150 hours of work by a single artisan, responsible for their piece from reception to delivery.

Each piece is housed in a case 38 mm in diameter and 10 mm thick, always in white gold – depending on the dial’s theme, it may be set with diamonds. The refined case proportions enhance the dial’s elegance. Sharp lugs, crisp angles, an inclined bezel, and a domed case back make it a showcase for unique artistry.

Each Taos watch is unique and represents a full year of development – a colossal investment for a single piece. Absolute luxury, worthy of the greatest creations of Métiers d’Art. Taos follows no trends, pursuing instead its own uncompromising creative path.

Each watch is an immersion in a universe where time becomes texture, where light plays across sculpted reliefs, where artisan hands reveal poetry hidden in matter. Taos transcends timekeeping to create an ode to beauty, a homage to the artisans who breathe soul and passion into each piece. These creations are more than timepieces: they are testaments to the dialogue between inspiration and craftsmanship, between vision and perfection.

Taos stands within a revered tradition - an artistic expression for which Geneva has been the vibrant symbol for more than three hundred years. Here, in its unique Alpine setting, the art of making a watch an object of art flourished as nowhere else.

Built on calibres - developed here or elsewhere - the city has fostered and sustained an ecosystem of specialised artisans. Enamellers, watchmakers, gem-setters, lapidaries, goldsmiths, painters, engravers, and illuminators have practised their craft in the heart of Geneva for centuries.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Models:

• TAOS Genèse – Unique Piece
• TAOS Odonata – Unique Piece

Dials:

• Genèse: Dominance of black, anthracite grey, and blue. Dial crafted in engraving under enamel, under-fired enamel, and stone marquetry, black jade and blue agate, hand-adjusted and worked in matte, polished, and textured finishes, to create a stratification of materials and reflections.
• Odonata: Dominance of sky blue, mauve, grey, and white. Luminous and iridescent palette, multi-level integrating high-relief technical engraving, paillonné enamel, diamond setting, mother-of-pearl marquetry, and plique-à-jour (translucent stained-glass-type enamel), creating plays of transparency and depths. Multiple layers of enamel requiring multiple Grand Feu firings.
• Hours and minute indications: Hands in 18K white gold, bevelled and mirror-polished by hand, in the shape of slightly curved leaves

Case:

• 18K white gold
• Diameter 38 mm
• Thickness 10 mm
• Odonata: diamond-set lugs and bezel

Calibre:

• VOP318, developed exclusively by Télôs (La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland) for Taos
• Automatic winding with double barrel mounted in parallel
• Hand decorations, exclusive to Taos by Atelier Olivier Vaucher, Geneva
• Invisible mass, concealed in the case
• Power reserve: approximately 72 hours
• Diameter: 30.40 mm
• Thickness: 4.20 mm
• Frequency: 4 Hz
• 26 jewels

Strap:

• Leather, alligator-style, hand-sewn in Geneva, with visible saddle stitching
• Pin buckle in 18K white gold, exclusive Taos design

Price on request