Surreal Jacob & Co.

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Surreal Jacob & Co.  - Jacob & Co.
Two of jacob & Co.'s 2023 novelties set a new bar for high jewelry and high complication timepieces

Surfing an unfaltering demand for creative and independent watchmaking, Jacob & Co. outdoes and one-ups itself. 

They're not the kind of people who just rest on their laurels. During the 2023 Watch Week, located in their vast exhibition area inside the Hotel des Bergues, jco is introducing a number of novelties that's hard to match. Those include variations, actual novelties and a pair of watchmaking monuments. However bombastic, this is the appropriate term for Astronomia Revolution and Billionaire Timeless Treasure.

The aforementioned variations consist in further evolutions of the brand's entry-level collection, the most consensual one among many that stand out by their complexity or exuberance. Palatial receives several additions, steel or rose gold on bracelet, with special features. If their dial is fitted with applied indices, then it is made of ornamental stones such as malachite or lapis. It it's not, then those indices are written in Eastern alphabets, Chinese or Arabic. It's surprising to see how so few brands actually do the effort of speaking to their customers in their own language.

Surreal Jacob & Co.

Another pillar of jco's offering, Epic X welcomes several new colorways. Both the two-hand with skeleton movement version and 43-mm chronographs sport combinations of baby blue, orange, green, black and or gold. They demonstrate the brand's fundamental ability to express and differentiate itself by mixing colors no one else does. 

Surreal Jacob & Co.

Not like anybody else, that could be the brand's mantra. Casino Tourbillon brings further proof of that originality with its playful complication ethos. Jco offers a new, elegant and tongue-in-cheek approach of gambling-themed timepieces. Not by displaying its flying tourbillon, which is relegated at the back of the piece, but with its actual, fully functional, free-spinning roulette animation. It's surrounded by a black onyx dial which gives Casino Tourbillon the appropriate attire to enter the Monte-Carlo temple of gambling. 

Surreal Jacob & Co.

The foundation of the Astronomia collection is that, no matter the version and/or complication, its movement is vertical, three-dimensional and spins on its own central axis. From inception, the brand wanted that speed to be high. Really high. At first, all they managed to get was an already impressive one spin every 20 minutes. Then they brought that down to 10 minutes, and then to 5. After years of iterations, research and lightening, Astronomia Revolution enter a new realm. Gliding above an 18-mirror array polished like those of a space telescope, the entire movement spins in 1 minute. It thus becomes a seconds indicator, a function delegated to a ruby-tipped, spear-shaped hand. Its double-axis tourbillon thus gains a third axis. And since the energy required to move that massive apparatus is enormous, jco needed to cool it down when it reaches the fragile balance wheel. They invented a new type of constant force device, which delivers the exact amount of energy needed by the regulating organ, at precisely its natural frequency, which is every 1/6th of a second.   

Surreal Jacob & Co.

One of the pillars of jco's prestige is Billionaire This collection of very high jewelry timepieces, entirely set, case, movement and bracelet, with several hundreds of diamonds, was so far under the rule of white diamonds and a single tourbillon. Billionaire Double Tourbillon creates a new branch in the family with the first full, diamond-set dial in the collection, fitted with a double flying tourbillon at that. It comes on a full diamond bracelet, as per usual, and a blue alligator leather strap. All of its 424 diamonds are emerald-cut, for a total weight of 161 ct. As bewildering as that seems, this is still within the range of usual Billionaires The second branch in the family tree, called Timeless Treasure, ventures into completely unheard-of territory. 

Surreal Jacob & Co.

It took three years to find the 482 yellow diamonds set on Billionaire Timeless Treasure. Acquired one by one, according to extraordinarily stringent criteria, all the Asscher-cut colored diamonds give this piece an aura that, put simply, breaks your brain. 216 carats of  fancy yellow and fancy vivid yellow diamonds, the largest of which weight 1.5 ct. The yellow glow, enhanced by a full green tsavorite flange, this piece basks in is just too much for words. And so is its price of USD 20 million. The brand's motto is « Inspired by the impossible » and it seems we now have to redefine what impossible means. 

Surreal Jacob & Co.

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