The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Swiss watchmaker Vacheron Constantin have unveiled the first works to emerge from their new Artisan Residency, an 18-month programme devoted to preserving and reinterpreting traditional craft techniques.

Three artists took part in the inaugural residency, each producing an original work. Furniture maker Aspen Golann made a piece titled Vessel, ceramicist Ibrahim Said created Shaping Time, and jeweller Joy Harvey produced Ruined Splendour, a bronze diadem.

The residency gave the three makers extended access to the Met's collections and its conservators, allowing them to study historic objects at close range and to test old techniques against contemporary ideas. The emphasis throughout was on craft as a living practice rather than a historical curiosity.

For Vacheron Constantin, a company whose own identity rests on centuries of watchmaking craft, the partnership extends a long-standing interest in the hand-made. For the Met, it is one of several collaborations with makers and manufacturers that bring the museum's collections into dialogue with contemporary practice.

The three works show how different the results of such a residency can be: a wooden vessel, a ceramic meditation on time and a jewelled headpiece, each drawing on the museum's holdings in a distinct way. Together they make the case that traditional skills still have new things to say.

The residency also reflects a wider revival of interest in making. Museums that once treated craft as a separate, lesser category are increasingly presenting it alongside fine art, and makers who work in wood, clay and metal are finding new institutional audiences. The three residency works, each rooted in a different material, fit squarely into that shift.