The owl dials are the most technically demanding of Patek Philippe's bird subjects because plumage in cloisonné is fundamentally at odds with the technique. Feathers are soft-edged and layered; cloisonné divides everything into hard-walled cells of gold wire. Suggesting down and depth without the wires reading as a cage is the whole difficulty, and it takes an enameller who knows where to stop drawing. The white owl compounds the problem by working almost entirely in a single colour, where the modelling has to come from tone rather than contrast.

The white gold case measures 34.5 mm. The owl is executed in cloisonné enamel over gold, the whites and greys built through successive translucent firings until the plumage has depth. A self-winding movement shows hours and minutes only. The watch is finished on an alligator strap. The Golden Ellipse case gives the bird an unbroken field to sit in, with no bezel, no subdial and no date window to crop the composition at any edge.

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