Panthere Mysterieuse Watch

CARTIER FINE WATCHMAKING BREAKS NEW FRONTIERS

Fine Watchmaking and High Jewellery: the confluence of Cartier’s two founding fields will be the highlight of the 2016 edition of the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie. A unique creative partnership has thus been initiated between High Jewellery, with all the flamboyance of its gemstones, the power of its style and the expertise of its craft, and Fine Watchmaking, with its attention to detail and its emblematic watches and complications.

Master watchmakers and master jewellers, facing the same constraints and driven by the same ambitions, merge their skills to create five extraordinary jewellery watches on the boundaries of both worlds. The panther tries its hand at the complication game, with two watches that transpose Cartier’s supreme expertise into a narrative register. Enamel granulation, the latest addition to the collection of Cartier artistic crafts, introduces a rich diversity of chromatic range to the Maison’s iconic feline. Five Fine Watchmaking signature watches illustrate the creative dynamism of the 2016 Salon, hoisting the twin banners of technical prowess and aesthetic progress to new heights. Finally, since experimenting with shape has always been at the heart of Cartier watchmaking, the Maison has decided to unveil the new Hypnose and Drive de Cartier watches at the Salon.

With a focus on thirteen distinctive creations and two new collections, traditional definitions have been shaken up in the celebration of a new multi-faceted expertise that combines High Jewellery and Fine Watchmaking. The mysterious has extended its magic beyond the limits of imagination, blurring previously finite boundaries in an exploration of new creative territories. The force of Cartier’s watchmaking expertise can be measured by the depth of the emotion it inspires.

High Jewellery and Fine Watchmaking in an extraordinary, unprecedented collaboration

For over 160 years, Fine Watchmaking and High Jewellery have written the history of Cartier side by side. Today, these two worlds come together.

With the audacity to break the rules of separating genres, this collaboration is driven by a vision of creative territory in which diverse skills complement one another to their mutual advantage. The movement has been ushered into existence by Cartier, whose unique and decisive view assures the value of such exchanges.

Thus, amid the secrecy of its workshops, Cartier creates rare and precious objects that contribute to the beauty of our world. Here, the dialogue established between complementary skills yields extraordinary results.

By working together, craftsmen surpass their own limitations to blaze a new path. Through their hands and under their skilled eyes, miracles take on shape and colour, volume and brilliance. The ultimate achievement is the creation of emotion, through pioneering curiosity and unlimited boldness – the authentic Cartier signatures.

PANTHÈRE MYSTÉRIEUSE Mysterious Hour

CALIBRE 9981 MC

The panther, which first entered the Cartier menagerie of animal motifs in 1914, is combined in the Panthère Mystérieuse watch with the mysterious complication, which has formed part of the watchmaking heritage of the Maison for over a century.

An authentic work of three-dimensional jewellery sculpture, the feline, with its coat of diamonds and black lacquer spots, is curled around the dial. With its head, paws and emerald eyes, the realism of the likeness is all the more striking because of the contrast with the transparent dial on which the hands float in suspension, activated by the invisible calibre 9981 MC.

This watch features a spectacular volume and sophisticated decorative jewellery work, returning to the interaction of transparency and harmony typical of this iconic Cartier complication, inaugurated in 1912 with the Model A mystery clock, the first of a long line of mystery timepieces. Veritable “miracles of timekeeping”, in the words of La Gazette du Bon Ton, capable of freeing time from the weight of the physical world.

A mystery movement and the panther motif: the Panthère Mystérieuse, which has the double advantage of combining two Cartier icons, revels in the impact of the Maison’s signature aesthetic.