Now the timepiece, worth roughly $1.4 million, is set to face off against the best watches from across the world at the Geneva Watchmaking Grand Prix in November. Set under a sapphire dome, the hours are marked by 12 golden folk dancers, each in a different regional dress set on Murano glass, the minute and hour hands adorned with eagle talons in homage to Albania's national symbol

Ruco's rollercoaster rise mirrors that of Albania, from poverty and isolation as the most closed communist regime in Europe, to rollicking capitalism. Along the way the jeweller overcame jealousy, the secret police and being sent into internal exile to rise to the pinnacle of his profession

It all began for Pirro -- as he is known in his homeland -- in 1985 when he was asked to make a medal in red and gold bearing the head of Enver Hoxha, the paranoid dictator who ruled the small Balkan nation with an iron fist for more than four decades. "That saved me," he told media from his workshop tucked away in an alley in the capital Tirana

During a trip to Basel in Switzerland in 2016, something new caught his eye. "I wanted to make a watch. It was my new dream," he said. For the next five years, Pirro said he focused on "doing something special, Albanian, and at the same time completely new and never before seen in the watch industry." The new timepiece which he calls Primordial Passion was designed in collaboration with the Swiss watchmaker Agenhor

"Sculptures, images of the country, pieces of culture... This watch is the culmination of all that, of this love for Albania," he added