Three of the best Year of the Dog watches for Chinese New Year. Bow wow!

We’ve barely made it through one new year when another thunders into view. And boy, do luxury brands love Lunar New Year! Just slap a bit of red or the new Chinese zodiac animal on to bags, clothes, shoes or whatever, and they are ready. It’s that easy!

Having said that (and here comes my deft pivot), Lunar New Year is taken a bit more seriously in the watch game, with more thought, craft and technical expertise in play. Rather than simply daubing everything in scarlet (although some brands still do that), the zodiac is often incorporated in artisanal finishing on watch dials or cases, a process that falls into the category of workmanship known in the trade as métiers d’art.

The coming lunar year will be the one of the pooch, of course, and Panerai’s new Chinese zodiac watch is the Luminor Sealand – The Year of Dog (ref. PAM00858; below).

While some watchmakers have been subtle about putting a mutt on a watch (Blancpain comes to mind, with adecorative canine motif kept to the back of the watch), Panerai is going big, its latest watch featuring a hinged steel cover meticulously engraved with an image of man’s best friend. The cover is further enhanced by a decorative tech­nique called sparsello, which involves the inlaying of engravings with gold thread.

The watch under the cover is arobust, no-nonsense 44mm Luminor that is light on features but has a P.9000 in-house movement with a three-day power reserve and 100 metres of water resistance. This is the 10th Panerai Chinese zodiac watch, and – limited to 88 pieces (naturally) – it’s only available at the marque’s Canton Road boutique.

Considering the price of previous editions, it’s likely the watch will come in at less than HK$200,000 (full price avail­able upon request), but my sus­pi­cion is that it has probably sold out already, with series collectors getting first dibs, but you never know.