TABLE CLOCK Van Cleef & Arpels
Fontaine aux Oiseaux
Rarely do you see craftsmanship as extraordinary as Van Cleef & Arpels’ Fonatine aux Oiseaux automaton (price upon request). The huge clock features a retrograde time display via an ebony base with 18-carat white-gold indicators on a 12-hour scale, topped off with eggshell marquetry protected by eight layers of vegetal lacquer.
Time, of course, is secondary in this aweinducing animation. The stage belongs to two 18-carat yellow-gold and white-gold bejewelled birds. When activated, the companions turn their heads, sing a song (via bellows and a clicking box), flutter their wings and raise their legs as they draw closer together in a display of courtship around a basin of rippling water made of chalcedony, rock crystal and aluminium.
Each creature comes dripping in gems. The male bird is coated in sapphires, emeralds, tsavorite garnets, diamonds and lapis lazuli, while the female displays her sapphires, mandarin garnets, amethysts, diamonds and turquoise. An 18-carat white-gold, mother-of-pearl and enamel dragonfly hovering below 18-carat yellow-gold and lacquer water lily leaves in the water is adorned with sapphires and diamonds.
At a height of 44.15cm and a width of 41.13cm, this unique piece is an impressive work of art for the home but more than deserves its place in a museum.
MINUTE REPEATER Chopard
LUC Full Strike Sapphire
Chopard’s first LUC Full Strike minute repeater debuted in 2016 and was such a tour de force that it took home the top prize at the 2017 GPHG awards for, among other things, exceptionally crisp sound made possible by using sapphire-crystal gongs to create its melody. In a Holy Grail-level update to the masterpiece, Chopard has now delivered the watch in a full sapphire-crystal 42.5mm by 11.55mm case - a world first for a minute repeater with sapphire-crystal gongs and case.
Sapphire crystal is so hard it requires the use of diamond-tipped tools to machine into shape and, as a result, is an extraordinarily expensive endeavour - hence why so few pieces are made. Here it offers a 360-degree view of the LUC 08.01-L hand-wound movement, but Chopard went a step further to engrave and paint the outer-minute railroad track onto the crystal, which encircles herringbone-shaped applied hour markers, an off-centre seconds counter and a 60-hour power-reserve indicator.
While the timepiece (price upon request) was created to ring in the 25th anniversary of the LUC collection, it hardly needs a reason to celebrate. It’s a prodigious milestone in and of itself, and only five will be made.
WATCH OF THE YEAR Cartier
Masse Mystérieuse
For the past 110 years, Cartier has been creating Mystery Clocks known for their transparent glass dials in
