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Away from the Fairways | TEE TIME
ART ATTACK It’s time to get in touch with your creative side, as Evan Rast explores one of the year’s top trends. The Tonda Woodrock by Parmigiani Fleurier HKGOLFER.COM
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The Time Pyramid from Arnold & Son (below left); Ulysse Nardin’s Carnival of Venice (below right)
n this era of bespoke dressing, making a jazz, tourbillons in place of the sound holes invite style statement requires a bit more effort you to channel your inner Bruce Springsteen. and originality. Watchmakers have realised The Tonda timepieces are fitted with the PF510 this of course, and have readily devised a handwound movement with hours, minutes, solution: why not offer timepieces that are central seconds, and one-week power reserve. essentially one-of-a-kind, crafted from artisanal The platinum cases come in 42mm, and are techniques that require years of mastery and are water-resistant to 30m. The bezel is engraved with the ‘Gibson motif.’ almost impossible to reproduce? Arnold & Son has released a totally new inThere’s a growing trend for métiers d’ art house watch movement with watches, proven by a large number architecture inspired of manufactures developing There’s a growing abyunique the regulators created by collections that highlight different trend for métiers John and Roger Arnold more artisan skills like enamelling, than two centuries ago, and by miniature paining, guillochage, d’art watches, antique skeleton clocks. While it sculpting and marquetry. proven by a doesn’t focus on conventional Some brands, like Cartier, large number of ar tisanal techniques, the have led explorations in the field, finishing and aesthetic are playing around with rarely seen manufactures co mp l etel y r i vetin g an d decorative arts. In 2012, it was straw developing deserves mention. The Time marquetry (Rotonde de Cartier collections that Pyramid comes in a 44.6mm Koala) and grisaille enamel painting (Rotonde de Cartier Tiger motif). highlight different 18k red gold case, and features the handwound, skeletonised This year, it’s the Etruscan gold artisan skills. calibre A& S1615 which is granulation technique with the pyramid-shaped and seemingly Rotonde de Cartier Panther watch, which was featured in more detail in the last issue. floats between two sapphire crystals. The balance Parmigiani Fleurier presents a great example of wheel is located at 12 o’clock while two mainspring traditional metiers d’art combined with an edgy barrels that provide 80 hours of power reserve modern design. The Tonda Woodstock (for the are on the opposite end. The watch – with hours, US) and the Tonda Woodrock (for the UK) have minutes, seconds and a double power reserve wood marquetry dials that showcase Gibson indication – features manually chamfered bridges guitars. Inspired by Michel Parmigiani’s love of with polished edges as well as circular satin-finished wheels and dial frame. One of the big names in artisanal watchmaking, Ulysse Nardin, presents a minute repeater with an intriguing feature: jacquemarts. These are animated figures that move in sync once the minute repeater function is activated. The Carnival of Venice watch depicts two jacquemarts in front of the Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal, which lift the masks they’re wearing once the hammers strike the gongs. To add to the elaborate movement, the dial is decorated further by champlevé enamelling, chiselling and hand-engraved details. The limited edition timepiece is fitted with the manual-winding calibre UN-71 that offers 48 hours of power reserve. The 42mm case come in platinum with an option for 18k rose gold. Only 18 pieces of the watch will be created. Roger Dubuis takes the values of its Excalibur collection to heart with CONTINUED ON PAGE 76
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Clockwise from top: Roger Dubuis’ depiction of the Knights of the Round Table; the Lady Arpels Enchanted Ballerina from VCA; Vacheron Constantin’s China Limodoron from the Florilège Collection; the Atmos Clock from Hermès; the fifth Atmos Clock released by Jaeger-LeCoultre 76
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a playful timepiece that depicts the legendary Its latest addition to its Poetic Complications Knights of the Round Table in 3-D. Twelve 7mm line is the Lady Arpels Enchanted Ballerina, where figures cast in gold and carrying their swords time is represented through a double retrograde replace traditional hour markers and make a movement indicated by the movement of a perfect circle around a dial in grand feu enamel. ballerina’s skirt. The dancer is delicately detailed Each figure is different, with the minute details using champlevé enamelling, and at a push of a all carved by hand. Underneath the table beats button, her tutu – made of a light metal alloy – the automatic calibre RD821. On the back of rises up in two sections, left to indicate the hours the watch is the solemn oath of and then right to show the the Knights of the Round Table, minutes, before they float Creative together with a lacquered coat of down again. arms, engraved in a circle. The 45mm Vacheron Constantin watchmakers are watch comes in pink gold and carries d e d i c ate d t h is y ea r ’s also providing the Geneva seal. Only 88 pieces will collection to women, with alternatives for be produced. the aim of having their women’s selections be those who are comparable to the men’s in looking to decorate quality and variety. It comes Mix and Match their homes, and up with a métiers d’art line Watchmakers are getting more each year, and this time it’s creative with combining different not their wrists. inspired by the illustrations techniques too. For instance Van in the book The Temple of Cleef and Arpels’ 2013 novelties focused on Extraordinary Dials, featuring enamel Flora, published by English botanist Robert John in all its forms; from champlevé – where troughs Thornton in 1799. Three distinct floral motifs are are carved onto the metal and then filled with featured, involving various forms of enamelling, translucent enamel – to pailonné, where the layers guillochage and gem setting. The Florilège collection: The Queen, White Lily of enamel are applied to fine sheets of silver or gold. There’s also plique-à-jour, which creates and China Limodoron are beautifully rendered, a stained glass effect, as well as painting and with a delicate play on transparency that the craftsmen at Vacheron Constantin seem to have sculpting of mother-of-pearl, lapis lazuli and gold. HKGOLFER.COM
master glassmakers in Les Cristalleries de St Louis are able to do. The result is the 176-piece limited edition Atmos Hermès Clock. Jaeger-LeCoultre has released the fifth work in its series of Atmos clocks created in tribute to Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. Inspired by a famous frieze that is displayed in Brussels’ Stoclet House, The Waiting, the original marble and coloured stone mosaic has been meticulously rendered in wood marquetry of more than 1,400 pieces and 35 wood varieties. A button slides open the wooden outer case and reveals an Atmos clock housed inside an inner glass crystal cabinet. The clock features a large mother-of-pearl coated dial for the minutes, with five-minute markers in petrified wood, and a 60-minute marker made from a cushion-cut yellow sapphire. A graduated 24-hour scale and month indication appears around the circumference of the moon-phase display. Limited to 10 pieces, this is an amazing piece of work.
mastered. The watches are equipped with the handwound calibre 4400 with a power reserve of 65 hours, housed in a 37mm case in 18k gold. The watches come in a limited series of 25 per dial design, 20 with round diamonds on the bezel, and five with baguette-cut diamonds. All bear the hallmark of Geneva.
Talking Pieces Watchmakers are also providing alternatives for those who are looking to decorate their homes, and not their wrists. Hermès has partnered with the makers of the Atmos movement, Jaeger-LeCoultre, and French glass artists Les Cristalleries de St Louis to present a table clock where crystal meshes organically with metal. Hermès designed the clock that forms the base of the hive-like structure, fitted with the Atmos movement, an almost perpetual-winding mechanism that needs no batteries, electrical current or winding of any sort to measure time. The Atmos uses temperature fluctuations to turn the clock’s mainspring. A spherical structure then encloses the clock, a delicate metal framework made from extrawhite mineral glass and white enamel that uses the doublé or double overlay technique (where several layers of glass are coated over each other and then combined with enamel) that only six HKGOLFER.COM
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