How far can one stray off the beaten path… without getting lost? Because the point of a marked path is to lead safely from point A to point B. But some brands bet on a point C. The ambition of an unknown niche market, disregarding watchmaking codes, to reach collectors wanting more than just a “watch.” We will never know if the Holy Grail exists, but horological Indiana Joneses keep regularly setting out in search of it, with passion and daring.
Without hands
One might classify Trilobe watches in this category. But that would not be entirely fair. By choosing to do without hands, the French maison was in fact following in the footsteps of certain pioneers. Urwerk (satellite hour), MB&F, Ressence, among others, have done without for over 20 years sometimes.
But with Le Temps Retrouvé, finalist at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG), Trilobe explores completely virgin territory. Which, in three centuries of mechanical watchmaking, does not happen every day.
Terra Incognita
Le Temps Retrouvé is undefinable precisely because no similar creation has ever existed. Let us nevertheless try to describe its contours, approximately, by concentric circles. It could be, at the furthest, an automaton. Technically, it is: it “moves on its own,” as the word implies.
Humanoid? On the only piece created, yes: it is indeed a human face that is represented. But it could be any other object. If the client wants to represent their dog or a dirigible, that would technically be possible. In reality, one can imagine that Le Temps Retrouvé could embody anything that exchanges a volume of gas with its environment.
This is where things get tricky: Le Temps Retrouvé does not just have an autonomous life, it interacts with its environment. It breathes, in a way. Is it alive? No, just mechanical, not biological. It does not work if it is not wound. But to carry the metaphor further, humans do not function if they are not “wound” with food either. The boundaries blur. The ground slips away. Certainties crack.
Back to basics
So one must return to the simplest: reading the time. The time is read by two rosettes, each made up of six petals, which open slowly at the temples, each petal marking an hour. The whole opens progressively during the first half of the day, before closing in unison to begin a 12-hour cycle again.
The minutes are read by the pupil, the eyes making a full clockwise rotation every hour. The seconds are not read but heard in the rhythm of the balance wheel. And Le Temps Retrouvé breathes: an exclusive fragrance, created with a Parisian perfumer, escapes with the rhythm of the mechanical breath. This is the problem: just when one thought to be back on solid ground with a simple technical description, Trilobe tells us its automaton looks at us and breathes. Back to square one.
The final word
What to think of Le Temps Retrouvé? Nothing. That is the problem. The creation cannot in any way be “thought.” Kant would say it does not fit any category of understanding. The object is not read through predefined material families. It speaks only to the soul, to the heart. No objective verdict can contain it. It is only perception, judgment, and emotion.
This is often what is asked of a watch creation: that it takes us beyond the product, that it pulls an emotional and dreamlike thread leading us beyond the material field. Except Le Temps Retrouvé has climbed so high that the thread is broken. The creation is a pure abstraction floating in an ether inaccessible to intelligence, but only to the senses.
Perhaps Le Temps Retrouvé should not have been in the “Mechanical Clock” category, but “Mechanical Exception.” But in reality, the piece, let’s admit it, escapes all categorization. And we wish the GPHG jury good luck classifying the unclassifiable, and rating emotions from 1 to 10. Le Temps Retrouvé, unclassifiable and iconoclastic, deserves only one thing: consecration.
