A YEN FOR ZEN
Escaping the hurried pace of our modern world, Jaeger-LeCoultre spirited guests to the serenity of Kyoto for a lesson in age-old craftsmanship. By Alice Birrell.
NESTLED AGAINST THE foothills of the mountains that insulate Kyoto’s ancient valley from the outside world is a lush moss-festooned garden so soft on the eye it is like looking at green mist. If it weren’t for the painstakingly raked sand, the maples fanning out around the perimeter and the uncountable coins like a glittering carpet of sequins on the bottom of the pond, it could well be a film set.
Instead it is one of a handful of places Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre is taking guests, including VIP clients, to celebrate its latest launches, and part of a concept spotlighting the maison’s know-how, which has been dubbed the Art of Precision. The parallels between seemingly disparate geographical locations – the pristine Vallée de Joux in the Swiss Jura Mountains, where the watchmaker is headquartered, and Kyoto, almost 10,000 kilometres away – are laid out through a schedule of discovery, rich in tradition both cultural and haute horlogerie.
To wit, guests experience a traditional Japanese lacquerware workshop and visit shrines, culminating in a gala replete with more Japanese surprises. But first, the humble Zen garden, steeped in the most spectacular of histories. “When you are in the manufacturer [the factory], it’s like you are outside the frenzy of today’s world. When you go into the workshop in Kyoto and you try lacquering, it’s the same,” explains Jaeger-LeCoultre CEO Catherine Rénier, who has just marked one year in the role. “Everything stops; you have to be focussed on what you do and forget about the speed of the day, because speed and craftsmanship don’t always go well together.”
Inside the mossy sanctuary of Ginkakuji, or the Temple of the Silver Pavilion, this is true. So committed was the man responsible for the site, including the wooden pavilion that sits watch over a glassy pond and which dates to 1482, that he ignored the political tumult and social upheaval beyond the bamboo walls. With MarieAntoinette-like resolution, shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa fostered the refinement of Japanese arts and crafts, including the tea ceremony, flower arranging and a form of musical drama known as noh. It is here that Higashiyama culture, which encompasses a large part of the country’s aesthetics as we know it today, was born.
Unlike the unflinching shogun, Jaeger-LeCoultre, founded in 1833, does not ignore the goings on of the outside
world. Part of its constant endeavours is engaging with customers to educate them on the extent of its craft (and the reason their watches command prices in the hundred of thousands of dollars, and occasionally millions). “If we don’t share our know-how and have our watchmaker or an enameller demonstrate to the clients what they do, then maybe they won’t understand,” says Rénier.
Skills such as guillochage, an engraving technique echoing the precise Zen lines in a sand garden, require dedication and monk-like patience. They are part of a stable of ancestral trades known as Métiers Rares. Founder Antoine LeCoultre started with the oldest métier, cutting the pinion, a crucial component. Skills such as skeletonising (creating lace-like structures out of metal) and enamelling also require nuanced gestures performed using binocular microscopes.
One of the newest métiers is the focal point for the Dazzling Rendez-Vous Night & Day and the Dazzling Rendez-Vous Moon, both women’s jewellery watches with two glittering rings on the bezels set with a total of 168 diamonds that seem to float – an effect achieved with a prong setting.
Time is afforded as needed, within reason, a concept mirrored in the event’s climax. At the floodlit Shinnyodo temple, guests gather for cocktails before entering one of the main pagodas to meet Japanese Living Treasures. These are government- designated masters nonpareil in embroidery, woodwork and lacquering. Kiju Fukuda, the only Living Treasure in embroidery, sits while an apprentice carefully sews fine gold thread onto a sea-mist kimono.
Fukuda is passing on his skills in this art to a small number of apprentices. At Jaeger-LeCoultre, there is also a program for younger workers to learn. “At all times, we have apprentices, young students who come and learn the new techniques we have built in watchmaking or métiers d’arts or other skills,” says Rénier, who sees a watch as a machine as complex as a plane, or a car, except that it must work 24 hours a day.
When the night’s entertainment, a noh showcase featuring elaborate costumes, make-up and elegant masks, gets underway, the room is silent as guests absorb the artful display. In Japan’s cultural capital, heritage still has the power to stun in an age of distraction. Earlier that day, Rénier reflects on the reaction of visitors when they visit Vallée de Joux. “The magic is whether you have a watch collector, or a person totally new to watchmaking, at the end they’re always amazed,” she says. “The sentence we get the most is: ‘Now I understand; now I know what it means.’”