Cartier Calibre De Cartier Men's Watch 7100036

Metier d'Art - Creative Craftsmanship - Part 2

The quest of Cartier
Cartier has been a symbol of artistic craftsmanship for more than half a century and the Cartier Collection showcases over 1,300 cult objects that illustrate the brand's techniques throughout the years. This rich heritage has been highlighted in the past decade through exceptional pieces in the Cartier Art collection that preserve, revive and reinvent those rare areas of expertise. Cartier's artistic crafts are at the root of unique pieces fashioned in the intimate atmosphere of workshops, where passionate artists devote themselves to the task of creation and to the culmination of their meticulous efforts.
 

One of the most interesting 'culminations' is also the most recent example of a forgotten craft brought to life by the Parisian luxury powerhouse: the art of granulation, a goldsmith's technique born in the first half of the third millennium before Christ and perfected by the Etruscans. Cartier used the granulation technique to create small balls from threads of gold that are cut and heated over a flame, then assembled one by one and fused with the gold plate to form a sensual panther and provide a tridimensional effect on the dial.

Vacheron Constantin on a mission
Juan Carlos Torres, Vacheron Constantin's CEO, has been a great advocate of genuine Metiers d'Art and he shows it at the SIHH: each year there are artisans performing their respective craft at the brand's booth for everyone to see. In the 2013 edition, the centuries-old Geneva manufacturer focused on showcasing feminine timepieces at the press presentations, with the highlight being the Metiers d'Art Florilege trio. The trilogy pays tribute not only to the intense relationship forged between the brand and artistic crafts, but also to the delicacy of English botanical illustration in the 19th century: inspired by Robert John Thornton's book 'The Temple of Flora', each timepiece has a dial that combines enamelling, guillochage and gem-setting.
 

Vacheron Constantin drew on the expertise of its craftsmen and also of the independent artist who is probably the most renowned specialist in fired enamel miniatures: Anita Porchet, who has collaborated with several other top-notch brands including Chanel. The artwork, reproduced in guilloche engravings and Grand Feu cloisonne enamels, creates an illusion of amazing realism, depth and perspective! In a first stage, the engine-turner cuts lines a tenth of a millimetre apart to create an expanding symmetrical pattern. Then the enameller outlines the shapes in thin enclosures of gold that separate the different fields of coloured enamels, according to the cloisonne technique. After this, the enamels are delicately and repeatedly fired in an oven at around 800° to deepen the colours and to let the light play through the translucent enamel. The final step is a last layer of colourless enamel, similarly vitrified and polished to preserve definition.

Van Cleef & Arpels poetry
Within the space of a single dial, Van Cleef & Arpels combines traditional crafts to create compositions of great feminine sophistication. Every year the new releases epitomize the Poetry of Time that has become so characteristic of Van Cleef & Arpels collections and display highly decorative savoir-faire in creating a captivating spectacle, not only in the emblematic Poetic Complications timepieces but also in the Charms Extraordinaire and Extraordinary Dials collections - from engraving and sculpture on gold to enamelling, miniature painting on mother-of-pearl and translucent lacquer. The Charms Extraordinaires watches are adorned with enchanting scenes which overflow from their dials; the Extraordinary Dials watches introduced a new combined savoir-faire: the technique of miniature painting on sculpted mother-of-pearl motifs that stand out in relief against an iridescent background.

Star of the 2013 Van Cleef & Arpels collection, the new Poetic Complications watch shows a miniature golden ballerina sculpted in relief and set with diamonds; the layered veils of her tutu create the magic of the piece. While an inner corolla of champleve enamel clothes the dancer, the outer veils come to life to display the time. A radiant guilloche background adds to the dial's vitality; several layers of translucent Grand Feu enamel are applied to lend depth and brilliance to the ensemble.

Bovet's mastery of skeletonization
Among Bovet's new releases for 2013, the Fleurier Amadeo 7-day Skeleton Tourbillon stands out - being the first skeletonized tourbillon among the Fleurier collection. The highly decorative movement is conceived by Bovet's Dimier 1738 division, labelled Manufacture de Haute Horlogerie Artisanale and specialized in conceiving the aesthetic and the decoration of the movements in three dimensions. Given the vulnerable and delicate nature of openworked movements, a different approach was taken in order to achieve aesthetic excellence without reducing the masterpiece's reliability and its precision-timing performances.
 

The secret lies in jointly entrusting the design of the skeleton working to watchmakers (for the technical aspects) and to engraving artisans. By incorporating technical constraints into their aesthetic endeavours, engravers were able to endow the plates and bridges with cut-out shapes designed to make a perfect combination with the typical floral motifs executed on the surface of each component. All this is done with the utmost care, since it is extremely risky and delicate to engrave the second face of a bridge or a plate without ruining all the hours of engraving on the first face. The Amadeo Virtuoso, whose movement is literally suspended between two arms, and the Recital 9 Miss Alexandra Tourbillon, are other fine examples in the mastering of engraved movements.

See the first part of the article