HK$5 million: a super deluxe music box fit for royalty
THE MUSIC BOX most often evokes the childhood memory of a beautiful dancer confined for eternity within the walls of her mechanical instrument home
most often evokes the childhood memory of a beautiful dancer confined for eternity within the walls of her mechanical instrument home. You can only catch a glimpse of her graceful spinning and twirling when the secret treasures of the box's compartments are briefly revealed. But what, as Royal Insignia proposes, if the music box's exterior were the jewels themselves, and nature's motifs and horology were centre stage?
"As the 19th-century naturalist philosopher, poet and author George Santayana said: 'The earth has music for those who listen'," Hoe says.
Royal Insignia has transformed the standard music box into an extraordinary piece of bejewelled art. Graced with swans and butterflies, the box represents the rising of a new day. Making reference to the Hans Christian Andersen tale of a duckling that becomes a beautiful swan, and a caterpillar's transformation to a butterfly, "The Guardian of Time" is conceived to depict the beauty of time, and the metamorphosis that it brings.