Dior VIII Grand Bal "Drape" Black Mother of Pearl Ceramic Ladies Watch CD124BE3C003

1480-1750 : From ornamentation to greater accuracySuccessor to the water clock, the mechanical clock with driving weight, gears and escapement developed in Europe from the late thirteenth century. The work of ironsmiths, these massive clocks were installed in civic and religious buildings to structure community life, for example in Exeter and London in England (circa 1285), Beauvais in France (circa 1305) and Milan in Italy (1336).The first watches, made possible by the invention of the mainspring, appeared in Italy in around 1480, then in France and Germany after 1500. They were miniature replicas by locksmiths of the ironsmiths' huge clocks.These early watches resembled small drums or spheres. As from 1550 they adopted geometric forms, then more elaborate shapes such as flowers, birds, skulls, shells and animals. These "fantasy watches" came back into fashion in the nineteenth century.The first watches, which kept time to within some thirty minutes a day, were more ornamental than functional. They were reserved for wealthy dignitaries who were eager to demonstrate their power, elegance and familiarity with science and progress.In 1675 Christiaan Huygens invented the balance-spring, thanks to which the watch's accuracy improved to four or five minutes a day. This justified the introduction of the minute hand. From now on, watches whose cases were decorated with enamel, engraving and precious stones were intended for show; plain cases signified a scientific and technical watch.1780-1900 : Fine Watches for ChinaFrom the late sixteenth century, the Europeans and their clocks, chiming watches and automata caught the attention of the Chinese Emperor, his court and his highest dignitaries.In the last years of the eighteenth century, with the Orient fascinated by mechanical timepieces, English, Swiss and French manufacturers adapted watches and automata to suit Chinese tastes and customs: watches and clocks sold in pairs, chased and engraved mechanisms that could be admired through a transparent dome back, others designed to withstand humid climates, with a centre seconds-hand or animated by automata and musical chimes. Cases were decorated with inverted symmetrical patterns, set with stones and pearls, or enhanced with meticulously executed enamel miniatures.Simultaneously, manufacturers of automata excelled in the creation of caged songbirds, snuffboxes and a multitude of fantasy objects.1750-1850 : The birth of the modern watchGreater precision, advanced expertise, and more sophisticated tools allowed for unprecedented technical progress to the detriment of decoration, which until then had distracted from the lack of innovation.A burning issue of the time was how to plot a ship's position at sea. And so the British Parliament and the Board of Longitude organised a competition to find a way to determine longitude at sea. The winner's country could be certain to rule the oceans and international trade. With stakes so high, the competition inspired a long line of clockmakers: Pierre Le Roy and Ferdinand Berthoud in France; in England Thomas Mudge, John Arnold, Thomas Earnshaw and John Harrison, author of the winning invention in 1761.Henceforth technical expertise became the key to new knowledge, itself the starting point for innovation and research. Each master would engrave his latest invention with the words Invenit et Fecit, the predecessor to the modern-day patent.New talents came to the fore: Abraham-Louis Perrelet, acknowledged as the inventor of the self-winding watch, Jean-Marie Pouzait and Jacques-Frederic Hourriet in Switzerland; Jean-Andre Lepaute, Robert Robin and countless others in France, not forgetting Jean-Antoine Lepine and Abraham-Louis Breguet (of Swiss origin), both recognised as the fathers of the modern mechanical watch.It was during this golden age of innovation and invention that Jean-Marc Vacheron opened his workshop in Geneva, in 1755. Now Vacheron Constantin, the firm has continued uninterrupted to incorporate and most importantly develop new expertise, play a pioneering role in the manufacture of watches, and innovate in design and decoration to create an immediately identifiable style.1850-1900 : The watch becomes part of daily lifeWatchmakers were the first profession to embrace large-scale production. From working alone in their homes, they grouped together in Manufactures. Their activity complemented that of the specialised master watchmakers who produced complication movements from small workshops.The onset of industrialisation, scientific progress and the rise of the railroads, leading to international time measurement and in 1884 the creation of 24 world time zones, irreversibly transformed the watchmaker's art. The basic watch had to satisfy demand from the widest population; the technical watch meanwhile was indispensable to scientists and scholars.The leading Manufactures - LeCoultre (established in 1833), Baume now Baume & Mercier (1834), Lange (1845), IWC (1868) and Piaget (1874) - concentrated on the mass production of more or less standard movements, though without sacrificing accuracy or quality.In 1841 Vacheron Constantin made a pioneering move when it installed machines with which to produce strictly identical mechanisms. Other manufacturers rapidly followed suit.Eager to abandon the winding key, in 1847 Charles-Antoine LeCoultre invented a system whereby the watch could be wound and set by the crown. The principle is the same today.By the 1880s the watch displayed all that could be mechanically measured: a simple or perpetual calendar, astronomical information, local time in the world's main cities, and chronographs with tachometer, pulsometer or asthmometer scales. Vacheron Constantin and LeCoultre offer two such examples. In contrast, precious watches such as those by Cartier (established in 1847) gave clear precedence to the jeweller's creativity over functionality.Even with the advent of the wristwatch, the pocket watch continued to benefit from innovative ideas into the twentieth century.1900-1920 : When the wristwatch becomes jewelleryIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, jewellers entered the watchmakers' preserve to transform watches according to their vision.Thanks to Art Nouveau and to the creations of Parisian jewellers, led by Cartier, pocket watches rediscovered the elegance they had left behind in the early industrial years.Because it was worn visibly, the wristwatch was both an accessory and a useful object. Henceforth it needed to affirm its identity and differentiate itself from the pocket watch.Through the work of jewellers such as Cartier, the wristwatch explored new forms, colours and materials: ovals, rectangles, squares with sharp, round or sloping corners, short, elongated or fancy barrel shapes; curved cases that mirrored the natural curve of the wrist; attachments which, thanks to Cartier, became an integral feature of the case design.The strict geometric forms of the 1920s were softened by the multiple hues of coloured precious stones and enamelwork.1920-1940 : The Art Deco watch and the Wall Street CrashAfter the First World War, the wristwatch developed in two simultaneous directions: the precious watch in a resolutely jewellery style, the technical or sports watch that emphasised function.Both favoured the clean-cut, geometric lines advocated by architects such as Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. This trend was confirmed at the International Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris in 1925.Cartier superbly mastered the formal sobriety of the Art Deco style, though this would give way in the jeweller's creations to a fascination for all things Oriental, culminating in the dazzling colours and fullness of the Tutti Frutti style.Alongside this, pure technique came out of the shadows with new forms for watches, now conceived as accessories. Round cases were reserved for self-winding and water-resistant models, while elongated rectangles housed a baguette movement. Originally created by Vacheron Constantin, others including Cartier, LeCoultre, Baume & Mercier, Dunhill, Lange and Van Cleef would develop the baguette form according to their own ideas.The 1929 Wall Street Crash left customers with diminished purchasing power. Cost dictated that the leading watch companies turn to steel and, with a few rare exceptions, strip their creations of ornamentation to instead elaborate on the facets and polished surfaces of the case. This was the spirit in which Jaeger-LeCoultre launched its legendary Reverso watch, a direct descendant of the Art Deco style. The case could be rotated to protect the dial and crystal while offering master decorators a canvas for their talents. Often, as with the 1936 Dunhill Facet watch, now one of the brand's emblematic creations, cases were extended by shaped crystals that prefigured the imposing lines of the next decade.The prevailing gloom was somewhat lightened between 1935 and 1939. In 1936, Georges Verger designed the Cadenas watch for Van Cleef.1940-1950 : From military to New LookThe early 1940s saw an influx of orders from the military for purely functional watches: oversized and anti-reflection cases, and highly legible black dials with luminescent numerals and hands, such as these models by IWC and Panerai.Meanwhile, Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Baume & Mercier, IWC, and Dunhill in particular continued to favour the imposing forms they had launched in the previous decade; shaped convex crystals became a key design feature. Now a decorative element in their own right, the attachments inspired endless creativity.The world craved more carefree moments and a touch of fantasy that would help forget the war years and the lean times that followed. With his New Look, unveiled in 1947, Christian Dior invented a newly glamorous feminine silhouette. Baume & Mercier momentarily moved away from its area of expertise, the chronograph, to explore a new direction with the creation of the sensually curved Marquise watch. A reflection of its era, it went on to international renown.This was also when jewellers, among them Cartier, turned to more feminine forms that suggested the spirit of the decade to come.1950-1980 : Technology and tradition come face to faceTechnical watches of the 1950s were prized for their flat form; Piaget, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Vacheron Constantin among others excelled in this domain.In the precious watch segment Piaget, which since 1940 had no longer contented itself to manufacture movements for other names, however prestigious, and had begun to sign its own watch creations, began in 1964 to craft dials from jade, lapis lazuli, opal, coral… some thirty different materials in all.These creations would have profound repercussions on watch design for the next fifteen years. In the 1970s Piaget launched an unusual and innovative line of "manchette" watches.The Polo de Piaget line, created in 1979, contrasted with this colourful, design-rich trend.Meanwhile designers explored new possibilities for watches in a more sporting style. They gave a precious angle to the polygonal shape of the Vacheron Constantin Asymmetric 1972 watch, and the dodecagonal form of the Baume & Mercier Riviera model. In 1973 Cartier unveiled twelve models that laid the foundations for the Louis Cartier collection, announcing a return to traditional forms over the coming decades.1980-2004 : The return of watches and wondersAfter 1979 the West emerged from economic recession sparked by the oil crisis of 1973. Watches and jewellery were now designed for any time of day and all occasions as an expression and extension of the wearer's personality. Tired of mass-produced quartz watches, connoisseurs, collectors and admirers of beauty again turned to the traditionally-crafted watch.Come 1983, certain Manufactures again focused their attention on the traditional mechanical watch with both precious and technical watches in classic yet fundamentally reinvented forms: cases were inspired by models from the early twentieth century, this time enlarged to affirm their personality and for more legible dials, complications that were unfeasible in the early twentieth century dictated expanded volumes.The watchmaker, the skeleton-engraver and the engraver illustrated their art discreetly on the back of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Art Deco watch from 1992, and on both sides of the Reverso Platinum Number One in 2001.Complication watches took complications as their focus, and as the starting point for the dial's design: the tourbillon draws attention to the technical rigour of the Pour le Merite watch by Lange & Söhne, the power reserve indicator of the Montblanc watch has replaced the numeral twelve, while on the Soiree I model, the power reserve and large date allow Lange & Söhne, as Breguet in his time, to move away from a classic dial composition to create an instantly recognisable style, a perpetual calendar with year and moon phases, along with a split-seconds chronograph, are the face of the Il Destriero by IWC, whose enduringly classic case houses the watch's soul in a movement composed of a "flying" tourbillon and a minute-repeater.Craftsmanship gives form to the dreamWith time now measured by ultra-precise electronic means, down to our computer screens and cellphones, it is Fine Watches, crafted according to tradition, that stand in opposition to this "banalisation" of time and inspire emotion.While their inner (movement) and outer (case, dial, hands and bracelet) beauty evolve alongside that of other decorative objects, they have unfailingly reflected the culture, the expertise and the art of the master craftsmen who bring them to life: the master watchmaker holds time in his grasp, each day pushing back the realm of possibility, the master skeleton-engraver and the master engraver match creativity with skill to transform an already perfect movement into a work of art, the master enameller expresses the scope of his art essentially on the dial, subliming the face of the watch with champleve, cloisonne and painting. These techniques demand creativity alongside age-old yet constantly renewed expertise, the master jeweller must demonstrate equal intelligence of the mind and of the hand to illuminate cases, dials and bracelets with the sparkle of stones.Master skeleton-engravers, engravers, enamellers and jewellers combine their art with that of the leading Manufactures' master watchmakers to affirm the precious or technical personality of each watch.Together, thanks to the knowledge they have inherited from generations past and their own secrets, day after day they transform a functional object into a work of art and the stuff of dreams.TIMELINECirca 1370 The first mechanical clocks with driving-weights, gear-train and escapement appeared.Circa 1410 Invention of the mainspring leading to the first portable clocks.Late 15th century The first watches appeared.Galileo Galilei discovered the isochronism of the pendulum.1656/57 Christiaan Huygens made the first pendulum clock as imagined by Galileo in 1637.1675 Christiaan Huygens, the father of scientific clockmaking, invented the balance-spring for watches.1755 VACHERON CONSTANTIN was established.John Harrison solved the problem of plotting longitude at sea through the exceptional accuracy of his timepieces.1760/70 Jean-Antoine Lepine invented and produced a calibre with bars.1770 Abraham-Louis Perrelet invented the self-winding watch.1795 Abraham-Louis Breguet invented the tourbillon, which he patented in 1801.1821 Nicholas Mathieu Rieussec developed the chronograph, which Joseph Thaddeus Winnerl perfected in 1831 (split-seconds chronograph).1833 LECOULTRE was established (later JAEGER-LECOULTRE).1834 BAUME was established (later BAUME & MERCIER).1845 LANGE was established1847 Charles Antoine LeCoultre invented a system to wind and adjust a watch using the crown.1847 CARTIER was established.1860 PANERAI was established.1868 IWC was established.1874 PIAGET was established.From 1880 Wristwatches grew in popularity.1883/84 The Greenwich meridian was adopted as the prime meridian, and time zones were introduced, first in the USA then throughout the world.1893 DUNHILL was established.1906 MONTBLANC was established.1923/1931 John Harwood patented the first self-winding system for a wristwatch, followed by that of Hans Wilsdorf.1926 Hans Wilsdorf filed a patent for a water-resistant watch (Oyster).1966 First prototype for a quartz wristwatch.1980 The revival of traditional mechanical watches.