Sotheby’s Puts Handcraft in Focus With ‘The Human Touch’ Exhibition

An upcoming Zurich exhibition brings a woven Hermès bag, bespoke Morgan car, British chronometer and sapphire jewellery into one conversation about how luxury objects are made, and what their materials reveal about the people behind them.

Watchmaker Patrick Amofah examining a watch movement with a loupe. — Watchmaker Patrick Amofah at work. Archival context for precision handcraft. Photograph: Patrick Amofah / Unsplash.

Sotheby’s is preparing to bring cars, watches, jewellery and handbags together in Zurich for The Human Touch, an exhibition scheduled for 23–28 November. The presentation places specialist making skills at the centre of a selection that crosses familiar collecting categories, according to WatchPro’s report on 13 November.

Its announced highlights include the Hermès Mini Kelly Picnic, Morgan’s Midsummer Coupé prototype, a Charles Frodsham Double Impulse Chronometer and a Moussaieff necklace. Sotheby’s watches executive James Marks described the makers’ expertise as their common connection. That provides a useful starting point for looking beyond the names on the objects to the decisions involved in constructing them.

Wicker meets the leather workshop

The Mini Kelly Picnic makes that connection unusually visible. Hypebeast’s exhibition preview describes a natural wicker body meeting pale blue-grey leather across the flap, handle and closing straps, with silver-tone hardware. Instead of concealing its basket-like construction, the design lets that structure establish the bag’s character.

In its guide to the Picnic family, Sotheby’s explains that the bags combine two specialist trades: saddle-making for the leather components and basket-weaving for the osier body. The auction house estimates around ten hours of work for an example. Those details describe the wider line, rather than an independently timed account of the specific bag selected for Zurich.

The same guide traces the Kelly Picnic 35 to Jean-Paul Gaultier’s 2011 reinterpretation of the house’s established silhouette, followed by the Mini Kelly Picnic in 2019. That history helps explain the design’s appeal: the familiar outline remains legible while a material associated with outdoor leisure changes its mood and texture.

For a visitor, the meeting of wicker and leather offers something concrete to examine. Corners, edges and closures reveal how two materials with different stiffness and surface qualities have been made to work together. The object can be read through its construction before questions of collectability or price enter the conversation.

Coachbuilding with modern tools

Morgan’s contribution extends the discussion to a much larger scale. The manufacturer unveiled the Midsummer Coupé in June, explaining that a client’s request for a fixed-roof interpretation of the earlier Midsummer developed into a programme of nine customer commissions, alongside the prototype known as the artists’ proof.

Morgan says its designers worked with Pininfarina on proportions and surfaces, while the roof required new structural engineering. The company describes hand-formed aluminium panels checked with digital scanning and laser measurement. Glazing is bonded into the structure, and the interior brings together teak, aluminium and leather.

These details complicate any easy division between traditional craft and modern production. In Morgan’s account, measurement technology supplies reference points while the final surface still depends on the judgement of the people shaping it. The value of the handwork lies in how it contributes to a finished design, rather than in the absence of machinery.

Octane’s report on the Zurich appearance describes the prototype’s near-black blue exterior, bright metal details, ivory leather and open-grain teak. The contrast gives the car a place in a design exhibition beyond its performance figures: light, colour and material finish become part of the same visual composition.

Precision at a smaller scale

The Charles Frodsham Double Impulse Chronometer ‘Hidden Seconds’ shifts attention from bodywork to a wrist-sized object. The exhibition preview describes a white dial, dark blue numerals and blued-steel hands. Beside the visually expansive car, its restrained face offers a different relationship between what the viewer sees and the work contained within.

There is a wider institutional context for the maker’s appearance. The Clockmakers’ Museum’s current Collectors’ Cabinet display, which opened in March, explores Charles Frodsham’s history and the making of its Double Impulse Chronometer wristwatch. It is scheduled to run until 28 February 2027, providing a separate opportunity to study the company’s contribution to timekeeping.

The museum dates the company’s foundation to 1834 and presents its work across nearly two centuries of changing timekeeping needs. That longer history gives the contemporary watch another dimension: it is part of a continuing workshop tradition, as well as an individual object chosen for display.

Moussaieff’s selected necklace adds colour and movement to the Zurich grouping. Hypebeast describes a Y-shaped arrangement of blue, purple and pink sapphires with diamond-set ribbons. Its relevance to the exhibition is not simply the presence of valuable stones: the arrangement turns individual components into a continuous pattern that can be followed across the piece.

Looking closely at the finished object

Taken together, the selection suggests a useful way to approach luxury design: follow the transitions between materials. A woven corner, a panel edge, a watch hand or a setting can make the relationship between technique and appearance easier to understand than a broad claim about exclusivity.

Sotheby’s Zurich gallery is at Rämistrasse 3. With the exhibition still ahead, the interest lies in how effectively that cross-disciplinary comparison will work in person. Its strongest promise is the chance to slow down and examine the decisions that turn materials into recognisable, carefully resolved objects.