As Precious As Time

Van Cleef & Arpels’ watches are made of beautiful stories that are transformed into intricate creations – art to wear on your wrist. This month, we spoke to Pascal Narbeburu, Director of Timepieces, to understand more about the maison’s timekeeping universe.

OHLALA – Back when you were studying engineering, did you imagine that your professional life would go towards timepieces? How did you enter this universe?
Pascal Narbeburu –
I started my career in a car company as a project manager for gearbox prototypes in which you have wheels, maybe a foretaste of watchmaking. Being an engineer means being a lover of all techniques, regardless of the field. From the infinitely small to the infinitely large, attention to detail and rigour are essential to the success of any project. Curious about everything, I can’t help thinking about all kinds of improvements in every area. Van Cleef & Arpels’ creations always begin with a story and our work is in the service of these. The movement of an arm, a very precise gradation, requires indepth research to finally combine technical and aesthetic solutions to serve the story the maison wishes to tell.

OHLALA – Life is better with a touch of magic. Can you please explain the concept behind Van Cleef & Arpels’ Poetry of Time?
Pascal –
Van Cleef & Arpels bears a unique vision of watchmaking that inspires dreams and wonderment. Poetry of Time is a rather abstract concept somehow, but it’s the idea that the maison wants to look at watchmaking, not from the perspective of technical and traditional watchmaking but from the idea of what is the nature of time that we want to express. Instead of starting with movements, cases, products or design, we start with an inspiration and that makes sense in the world of Van Cleef & Arpels. The maison’s timepieces are the result of a true collective work where jewellery know-how meets watchmaking expertise but also traditional crafts, from Paris’ Place Vendôme to Van Cleef & Arpels’ Watchmaking Workshops in Geneva. In keeping with the maison’s unique Poetry of Time, the craftsmen deploy the nobility of their expertise, transforming challenges into innovations and enchanting scenes.

OHLALA – We understand that each VC&A timepiece tells a story. However, they are not only about creative storytelling. How do you connect the beauty of the watches with the technical aspect? How important are the right technical details for each model?
Pascal –
Van Cleef & Arpels’ timepieces are created using the sources of inspiration and history of the maison, and imbued with an expert savoir-faire. We try to blend fine watchmaking, jewellery and craftsmanship perfectly. In order to highlight the story the maison wishes to tell, along with our expertise in craftsmanship, such as enamelling or miniature painting, the technical elements of the watch remain in the background. We nevertheless use highly sophisticated tools to develop the extremely complicated animation modules of our Poetic Complications, for example. This ensures that we push back the limits of what is feasible, thanks to the collaboration of our watchmakers’ ingenuity and our engineers, using new technologies and innovation to further research and achieve our prowess. We also collaborate with engineering schools to develop highly specific machines, due to the unique character of our stories, which enable us to precisely control the quality with no compromise on the aesthetic and technical characteristics of our watches.

OHLALA – Time is such a precious commodity. In your opinion, why does wearing a unique watch to keep track of life make it more meaningful?
Pascal –
What could be more poetic than to have the feeling of being able to suspend the passing of time for a moment? Van Cleef & Arpels’ creations are miniature artworks to be worn on the wrist, offering the wearer a timeless moment of escape. The excellence of our savoir-faire and expertise gives rise to enchanting creations: these métiers d’art and the delicacy of these skills, mastered in-house by our craftsmen, are as precious and rare as our timepieces and reflect our vision of time: the maison takes the time to create its timepieces.

OHLALA – Do you have a favourite timepiece?
Pascal –
Answering this question is always difficult. But if I had to choose two among them, it would be the Pont des Amoureux for the symbol of love, an inspiration dear to the maison since its creation, and the Heures Florales, which displays a poetic vision of time, with an animation mechanism developed in-house, and the beauty of the métiers d’art used in the dial.


POETIC COMPLICATIONS

Van Cleef & Arpels has a different approach to creating timepieces. The Poetic Complications collection brings a distinct vision of the passing hours where enchantment and storytelling walk hand in hand with technical prowess and skilled enamelling techniques. Precious materials and the brand’s unique savoir-faire bring a captivating story to life on the dial. Retrograde movements, flower opening modules and minute windows enable time to be measured via a stroll in a flower garden or the movements of a ballerina. These marvellous creations provide invaluable moments of emotion, reflecting the astonishing imagination of the luxurious brand.

BLOSSOMING TIME

“When we work on watchmaking projects, our goal is to use mechanisms to capture the poetry of the passage of time. And what could be more poetic than measuring time with the opening and closing of a flower?” – Nicolas Bos, President and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels

Nature is one of the main sources of inspiration for the jewellery and watches universe, and this theme has been fascinating to VC&A since 1906. The Heures Florales project was born after the floral clock concept (Horologium Florae) developed by Swedish botanist Carl Von Linné. The idea, featured in his 1751 book Philosophia Botanica, showcases a hypothetical garden plan with a wide variety of plants, where flowers open and close at specific moments of the day to show the time.

The Lady Arpels Heures Florales and Lady Arpels Heures Florales Ceresier watches mix art and science with their three-dimensional dials, offering a poetic rendition of timekeeping. Thanks to the opening and closing of 12 corollas, watching the time becomes a spectacle as the flowers blossom and close, renewing the dial’s scenery every 60 minutes.

WATCHMAKING EXCELLENCE

Up to 166 elements are set in motion to bring the dial to life, thanks to a module entirely developed by the artisans of the maison’s Watchmaking Workshops in Geneva. Each of this garden’s petals is articulated and connected to the watch’s mechanism. The technical challenge of combining so many elements is supplemented by ensuring a flower opening process with three different sequences. With each passing hour, the open flowers close to make way for a new combination. The next day, the sequence of the bouquets that succeed one another from hour to hour will be different. The eye is entertained by new surprises as it seeks out the measure of time between buds and corollas. Telling the time is completed by a minute display, visible in a window on the side of the case.

BEJEWELED GARDEN

The scenery is presented inside a 38mm case in white or rose gold. The Lady Arpels Heures Florales evokes summer in gentle blue and green shades, with leaves and flowers offering a delicate contrast with the background in white mother-of-pearl. The Lady Arpels Heures Florales Ceresier revisits the same design in a springlike tableau. Ethereal blue butterflies – emblematic of Van Cleef & Arpels – flutter between the pink and red corollas, accentuating the dial’s relief effects. On each dial, 226 elements or more are intricately brought together at the Watchmaking Workshops in Geneva. Petals and butterflies in miniature painting, branches in sculpted gold and clouds in sculpted mother-of-pearl are enhanced by flawless stone setting, with white and yellow diamonds sparkling alongside one another. The gold back of the case is engraved to echo the dial, while the movement’s oscillating weight – in guilloché gold and miniature painting – is visible beneath a sapphire glass, itself engraved and enamelled with a winged creature, a dragonfly or butterfly. Time thus flows to the rhythm of nature in the garden of Van Cleef & Arpels.

THE TIME OF FLOWERS

Lady Arpels Heures Florales

  • 38mm case in white gold and diamonds
  • Dial in white gold, rose gold, yellow gold, yellow and white diamonds, white mother-of-pearl, miniature painting
  • Automatic mechanical movement, fitted with a module opening the flower for the hours and a lateral display for the minutes
  • Shiny blue alligator strap

Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier

  • 38mm case in rose gold and diamonds
  • Dial in rose gold, white gold, yellow gold, pink sapphires, yellow and white diamonds, white mother-of-pearl, miniature painting
  • Automatic mechanical movement, fitted with a module opening theflower for the hours and a lateral display for the minutes
  • Shiny pink alligator strap

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