WORLDTEMPUS - 23 December 2010
Elizabeth Lilly Doerr
Le Pont des Amoureux combines innovative mechanics with unique aesthetics and a story told every day on the dial © Van Cleef & Arpels
“In effect, it is the dial that is the determining factor at Van Cleef & Arpels,” Dominique Baron, the gifted master enameler that Van Cleef & Arpels collaborates with on its Poetic Complications line, told me earlier this year. “The creations by Van Cleef & Arpels effectively give another dimension to time because its representation across the Poetic Complication watches is above all an aesthetic one approaching more of an artistic oeuvre telling a story that one wears on the wrist rather than a watch.”
This statement could not be more true. For most connoisseurs of fine watchmaking, however, this plays a minimal role. For such clients, it is exactly the other element that the brand has done so well in the line that makes this timepiece one of the (subjective) best to come out this year. The truly unique mechanics added to a caliber manufactured by Jaeger-LeCoultre can be attributed to Agenhor's Jean-Marc Wiederrecht — who is something of a mechanical poet at heart himself and an original specialist in the art of retrograde.
The Pont des Amoureux timepiece revisits the ideal of Paris already graphically seen in 2009's Journée à Paris: the fine lady on the left side of the dial counts the hours, while the gentleman on the right counts retrograde minutes. At midnight they meet for a brief kiss before the retrograde systems part them, immediately taking each back to the beginning of their respective scales.
This model differs from Van Cleef & Arpels's other Poetic Complications in that its dial makes one revolution in a 24-hour period, thus simulating one day rather than one year. This watch was justifiably voted the ladies' watch of the year at the 2010 Grand Prix d'Horlogerie last month.
