THE ART OF T IME The latest métiers d’art watches combine extraordinary craftsmanship, honed across centuries, with artistic vision to create 21st-century masterpieces. By Ming Liu Watchmaking, in recent times, has been suffering an existential crisis. Wristwatches, after all, are an anachronistic, romantic endeavour, where poor, hard-working timepieces are increasingly in the shadows of omnipresent timetelling: on our phones and desktops, microwaves and car dashboards. For the most venerable watchmakers, however, that’s precisely why they’re creating what are known as métiers d’art watches – works of art for the wrist that are painstakingly decorated and embellished with age-old artistic crafts. It’s what Christian Selmoni calls “intelligence of the hand”. Selmoni is the style and heritage director of Vacheron Constantin, the watchmaker that has amassed some 300 different types of metiers d’art skills over its 267-year history. He elaborates: “We are in a civilisation where we value intellectual intelligence a lot, but we have to remember that, a long time ago, the intelligence of the hand was as important as the brain. For me, Vacheron Constantin has this kind of intelligence.” Selmoni is talking about the watchmaker’s recent collection with the Louvre museum in Paris, where four very limited pieces called Tribute to Great Civilisations saw important works from antiquity miniaturised onto 42mm watch dials. Spanning a quartet of important eras – the Persian Empire under Darius the Great, the Egyptian pharaohs from the time of the Middle Kingdom, Greece’s Hellenistic period and the birth of the Roman Empire – these masterpieces are set with cultural symbols sculpted in gold appliqués and further brought to life with a surround of meticulous decorative arts inspired by their corresponding times. Looking at just one watch can mesmerise its wearer for hours. Lion de Darius, for example, takes after a frieze in the Palace of Darius in Susa. Here a master engraver accurately stylised a lion’s mane, fur and muscles, then further captured the underlying frieze via stone marquetry – 69 components to be exact – which was given exceptional depth and emotion thanks to a striking combination of turquoise and mochaite jasper. All this was further encircled by a juxtaposition of triangles – handmade and hand-applied, of course – crafted through engraved metal and champlevé enamel with unique ageing inclusions. Meanwhile, additional multidimensionality comes courtesy of cuneiform script that’s etched on the sapphire glass, as the 237-component, calibre 2460 G4/2 ticks away below, displaying the hours, minutes, days and dates via four rotating discs. Intelligence of the hand indeed. 78
