JAEGER-LECOULTRE’S CONNECTION TO THE COSMOS
The Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar goes beyond time
On the wrist of Benedict Cumberbatch, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s perpetual calendars hit both the digital and big screens, showing the brand’s prowess in the highly-sophisticated complication.
On Monday the Swiss watchmaker launched a short video titled In Perpetual Motion, which captures the spirit of the new Polaris Perpetual Calendar.
Today, the Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar makes a comeback with the release of Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness.
A perpetual calendar compares to a miniature mechanical computer that shows the correct date, automatically adjusting for the different duration of months and even for leap years. As long as it is kept wound, Jaeger-LeCoultre assures that its complication needs no adjustment until 2100 and then not for another 400 years.
The video In Perpetual Motion portrays the notion of time and its relationship to three natural environments: lakes, forests and the heavens.
Wearing the new Polaris Perpetual Calendar, Cumberbatch is immersed in each of these environments in turn, while narrating an evocative text that reflects on concepts of perpetual movement and action — the eternal cycles and ever-changing sense of time, as expressed by the natural world.
Glimpses of different celestial bodies remind us that our sense of passing time, as well as its measurement by calendars, clocks and watches, is governed by the rhythms of the cosmos and the regular cycles of astronomical phenomena.
“The world is moving very fast and our involvement with it is constantly changing, from one day to the next,” said Cumberbatch, a long-time friend of Jaeger-LeCoultre. “Whether I’m running or reading or sitting still and contemplating the world, the Polaris Perpetual Calendar really is a watch that fits in with all scenarios and will give me the essential information I need every day.”
With an emphasis on balance and legibility, the date, day and month indications along with moon phases are displayed on the dial with a deep gradient-blue lacquer.
Thanks to the new in-house automatic movement, Calibre 868AA, the classical Northern Hemisphere moonphase display is complemented by a retrograde display of moon phases in the Southern Hemisphere.
Providing a power reserve of 70 hours, the Polaris Perpetual Calendar is housed in a 42mm steel or pink gold case, whose rapid-change attachment allows for interchangeable straps.
Launched in 2018, the Polaris line is a contemporary take on Jaeger-LeCoultre’s historic diving watches while the Master Ultra Thin collection is a reinterpretation of traditional complications with slim movements, and in elegant designs with clean lines.
Founded in 1833, Jaeger-LeCoultre has made more than 1,200 calibres. Its ultra-thin Calibre 145, nicknamed Couteau (French for knife), debuted in 1907. Installed in pocket watches of that era, the movement was just 1.38mm thick.
With a thickness of 4.72mm, the Calibre 868 powers the Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar, housed in a pink gold or steel case with a diameter of 39mm. The transparent sapphire case back reveals the movement with an open-worked pink gold winding rotor.
Its balanced dial features a moonphase display at 12 o’clock and calendar indications on three sub-dials — each slightly recessed to add a subtle note of visual complexity.
Appearing in Doctor Strange (2016), the Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar seems a particularly appropriate complication for the former neurosurgeon played by Cumberbatch, due to its display of multiple timelines on the dial and its ability to indicate the correct date over the course of many lifetimes.
An essential reference at several key points during Doctor Strange’s journey into the mystic arts, the watch serves as a tangible reminder of meaningful events from the character’s past and present.
The sequel Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness has the Sorcerer Supreme accompanied by the Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar, journeying into the unknown and traversing mind-bending and dangerous alternate realities of the multiverse to confront a mysterious new adversary.