In 2024, the year of the dragon in the Chinese zodiac calendar, Jaquet Droz presented several watches with dragon motifs – including one where the scaly beast was designed by no less than John Howe, famous for Middle Earth drawings from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings universe.
Jaquet Droz is among one of the brands with the strongest tradition of zodiac-motived watches. Since 2010, the La Chaux-de-Fonds-based brand that produces circa 100 unique watches per year has celebrated the annual animals with dedicated watches. The dragon, however, is timeless. The first known dragon timepiece by Pierre Jaquet-Droz – the famous clock and automata genius who started making clocks in 1738 – is a table clock made around 1760 for the Chinese Emperor. This, and other clocks and automata made by the first Western watchmaker to enter the Forbidden City, can still be seen on display in the horological museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing.
The traditional Chinese zodiac has a 12-year cycle with different animals including pig, rabbit, and monkey, but the dragon is the most timeless of them all. The most recent year of the dragon was 2024, but as its symbolism is so strong and universal, dragons are requested every year. The dragon is the symbol of power, luck, wisdom, and prosperity – and the emperor of China. The latter also gives the Imperial dragon a care-taking side, as the emperor should look after his people. In a nutshell, you could say that an Imperial dragon is more of a superhero, whereas a Western dragon tends to be portrayed as a villain.
The unique dragon watches made in recent years by Jaquet Droz honours the brand’s tradition of haute horlogerie watchmaking and automata. When you push the smooth activating and winding button at four o’clock, the dial side with the sculpted and hand-engraved dragon gives you an 11-second-long action with 19 moving parts. The eyes open and close, the tongue comes out, the scales wave, and the precious stone the dragon embraces with its claw starts rotating.
When it comes to these powerful creatures, Jaquet Droz has a collaboration that is extremely appealing to anyone who is into the Lord of the Rings: John Howe, who is the artistic designer of Peter Jackson’s blockbuster interpretation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Launched in 2022, he first created a Western dragon for Jaquet Droz. But for Mr. Howe’s most recent horological dragon, he opted for an Imperial dragon in the watch named Imperial Dragon Automaton Red Gold – Cuprite. Cuprite is a ruby-looking oxide mineral composed of copper, which forms the background of the sculpted, engraved, hand-patinated miniature-painted, and grand-feu-enamelled beast. Compared with the 2022 release, it has a less aggressive and more protective expression with a friendly design of its face, claws, hair, and teeth. As the Imperial dragon is also associated with life-giving rain, gold-and-ochre-painted clouds surround its head and tail. The dial is made from cuprite, whose red colour represent the dragon’s fire, strength, energy, and vitality. The background of the Howe-designed dragon can, however, be made with materials like onyx, mother-of-pearl, or opal. Or whatever the collector wants; 100% of the approximately 100 unique pieces made every year by Jaquet Droz are made bespoke in close collaboration with collectors evenly spread around the world.
