Big Bucks: Big Bang! Hublot Watch Covered with 141 Carats of Diamonds

(IDEX Online News) - The €2 million ($2.8 million) Big Bang watch from Hublot could be more appropriately called the Bling Bang. The white gold, one-of-a-kind timepiece, which includes a Vendôme Tourbillon movement, contains 637 baguette diamonds and one rose cut diamond on the crown.

All told, the total weight of the diamonds, which are graded Top Wesselton (white) / VVS, exceeds 141 carats.

According to Hublot, the task of cutting the stones took 45 gem-cutters in excess of 13,000 hours. Once the diamonds were all cut, they took a further 2,000 hours to set into the piece, which began life as a "light-hearted confidential challenge" between Hublot's CEO and the company’s master gemstone setters.

Such was the amount of work needed to complete the watch; it was only finished the day before BaselWorld 2011 opened, where the watch was shown to the public for the first time.

More than 270 carats of rough diamonds were chosen from a parcel of 1,500 carats sourced from a mine in the Yakutsk region of Russia.

For those interested in seeing it up close, the watch is going on display at the Hublot boutique at 10 Place Vendôme, Paris.