Miniature masterpieces
Luxury Swiss maison Vacheron Constantin has collaborated with the Louvre on a spectacular series of limited-edition métiers d’art watches that celebrate four masterpieces from the museum’s antiquities collection, and the great civilisations they symbolise.
Vacheron and the Louvre opened within 40 years of each other in the 18th century, and the collaboration reflects their shared passion for history, culture, archiving and conservation.
The watches are an extraordinary showcase for Vacheron’s master artisans, tasked with representing historical treasures in a sculpted gold appliqué on the dial – a canvas less than 40mm in diameter.
The artefacts celebrated are the Great Sphinx of Tanis, from Ancient Egypt; the Persian Empire’s Lion de Darius; ancient Greece’s Winged Victory of Samothrace; and a bust of the first Roman emperor, Augustus.
Each appliqué sculpture is surrounded by a frieze embellished with written elements and ornamentation inspired by the particular civilisation. Following consultation with the Louvre’s curators and historians, Vacheron Constantin meticulously created these friezes using craft techniques appropriate to the era, from enamelling and stone marquetry to micro-mosaic and engraving.
Over the dial sits a slightly smoked sapphire crystal, engraved with extracts from famous texts of the period, rendered in cuneiform, hieroglyphic, ancient Greek or Latin script.
There are five limited-edition watches for each theme, all with four discs – powered by Vacheron Constantin’s self-winding Calibre 2460 G4/2 – indicating the hours, minutes, day and date. The apertures that reveal these numbers are positioned around the periphery of the dial, so each tiny sculpture is unobstructed by moving hands. The movement’s pink-gold oscillating weight, visible through the sapphire crystal caseback, features a depiction of the Louvre’s colonnaded east façade.
Each watch has either a pink- or whitegold 42mm case and is supplied on a coloured alligator-leather strap. Hannah Jones Métiers d’art Tribute to Great Civilisations collection, POA; vacheron-constantin.com