Telling a love story or celebrating the benevolent bounty of nature, these pieces interpret the measurement of time as an appeal to the imagination.
Lady Arpels Jour Enchanté and Lady Arpels Nuit Enchantée – two new limited-edition and numbered watches designed as miniature works of art – have just joined the collection. Blending technical prowess and vibrant tableaux of poetic grace, these three-dimensional scenes come to life within a 41-mm case through an interplay of perspective celebrating Enchanted Nature.
Enamel: a Blend of Tradition and Innovation
Sublimating the passage of time, métiers d'art contribute to creating a wondrous universe right on the wrist. Inside its Geneva Watchmaking Workshops, Van Cleef & Arpels exalts and eternalizes this savoir-faire, particularly thanks to an enamel workshop and a training school.
Going beyond time-honored methods, the Maison stands out for stimulating innovative enameling techniques that make it possible to create high-relief decors. Each new challenge takes up the composition designed by the Creation Studio and may require up to several years of research and development. A dialogue thus emerges between science and art, reconciling technical demands and stylistic intent to narrate the story held within the watch.
Lady Arpels Jour Enchanté Watch
With this creation, the Maison brings to life a graceful silhouette picking flowers under the early morning sun. Light passes through generous leaves of white gold, plique-à-jour enamel and diamonds harboring a field of flowers aglow in dazzling colors. Set with yellow sapphires, these blossoms are rendered in relief thanks to a new technique developed by Van Cleef & Arpels to offer the illusion of a boundless flowerbed: façonné enamel. Meticulously hand-sculpted, the feminine figure in white gold spreads her wings made from sparkling, pearly-white plique-à-jour enamel for a luminous transparency effect.
In the background, affixed to a sky exhibiting three nuances of turquoise, the sun gleams with the radiance of its precious stones: spessartite garnets, colored sapphires, or diamonds. Its rays are secured with a lifted setting, an innovative technique that creates the impression of stones suspended like dewdrops, with no visible attachment. The story continues on the back of the case, through an engraved decor illustrating the fairy taking flight. Two years of development and 180 hours of work were required to assemble this dial, a testimony to Van Cleef & Arpels’ ingenuity.
Façonné Enamel and Setting in Enamel
To give full expression to a miniature sculpture of delicately defined contours, the Maison developed several complex techniques in 2023. These approaches include a means of façonné enamel – which took 16 months to perfect – and setting in enamel – which required 24 months.
Façonné enamel
The material is gently poured onto a stainless-steel medium and then sculpted through whittling motions, sliver by sliver, to produce a three-dimensional form. After low- temperature firing to eliminate the tensions induced in the material, the enamel is carefully glazed at high temperature. Its surface becomes smooth and luminous as if polished. The full process creates a striking visual effect of volume and transparency.
Setting in enamel
This technique involves setting precious stones within the plique-à-jour enamel with no other metal components. To perform this aesthetic exploit, the stone is exactingly positioned in an indentation deftly carved in the enamel. The piece is then re-fired according to a highly precise temperature curve to seal the composition. This process generates a remarkable “floating” effect that accentuates the glow of the precious stones.
Lady Arpels Nuit Enchantée Watch
Upon a moon-kissed flowerbed, the fairy momentarily rests her graceful silhouette inside a cave of dazzling crystals. The fancy-cut sapphires with their pink and purple nuances, as if cut from the cave walls, impart a sense of shelter and serenity. Cradled by the moon and stars illuminating the sky thanks to the glimmering grisaille enamel technique, the white-gold fairy sparkles. Her wings, fashioned in glitter plique-à-jour enamel with a pearlescent effect, exalt the silhouette of this feminine embodiment of nature’s beauty and power. Façonné enamel gives shape to the yellow sapphire- set flowers. To round out this mysterious tableau, a rock crystal set with rose gold hour markers bespeaks the meticulous detail with which the ornamental stones are sculpted. Exuberant details create a striking decor. The magical story continues on the back of the case, expressed through varied volume-generating engraving and polishing techniques that show the fairy enthralled by the beauty of the night sky.
The Lapidary Art
A reflection of the Maison’s tradition of excellence, the work of lapidary craftsmen begins with the selection of an assortment of gemstones that meet stringent criteria. The stones conform to the needs of the piece, particularly with regard to shape and color. Following this selection, the lapidary undertakes a veritable puzzle to render the design of the dial as faithfully as possible, each stone endowing the watch with its unique character.
For the creation of the Lady Arpels Nuit Enchantée watch, the sapphires were cut in such a way as to sublimate the material, thus preserving the rugged aspect of the cave.
