Lady Arpels Ronde des Papillons

On the occasion of the SIHH 2016, Van Cleef & Arpels has recreated the ethereal lightness of nature with a brand new movement, featuring retrograde hours, variable speed minutes and animation on demand. Thanks to this watchmaking prowess, the Lady Arpels™ Ronde des Papillons Poetic Complications™ watch captures time within a heavenly tableau that is constantly changing.

An aerial ballet

Ever a faithful interpreter of lightness and movement, the Maison this year gives pride of place to butterflies: one of its themes of predilection since the 1920s. Its new Poetic Complications watch brings together three colored butterflies in a playful aerial to-and-fro. Their circling dance between the clouds sets the tempo for the minutes, while the hours take flight in the wake of a swallow, symbol of joyful portent.

With this winged ballet, Van Cleef & Arpels portrays all the vitality of nature and expresses the passage of time with a delicate poetry unique to the Maison.

A feat of watchmaking

Beneath the apparent delicacy of the dial, the retrograde hour, variable speed minutes and animation on demand movement developed exclusively for the Lady Arpels Ronde des Papillons watch is highly sophisticated. Virtuoso watchmaking expertise is applied to a ballet of butterflies moving at different speeds. In a one-hour cycle, they accelerate and then slow down again, thanks to an elliptical wheel inside the mechanism.

To measure the minutes, each butterfly appears in turn between the clouds, then disappears to make way for its successor. In keeping with the Maison’s retrograde displays, the hours are indicated by the swallow, which points the tip of its wing at the twelve consecutive hours before returning to its initial position.

Finally, the dial can come to life on demand via an animation of some 13 seconds. At the push of a button, the butterflies set off on a dance around the clouds. They then calmly resume their flight, allowing for the time that has passed during the animation.

A blend of savoir-faire

To render all the ethereal delicacy of the scene, the Maison has brought together different crafts that combine harmoniously on the dial’s surface. The gentle luminosity of the sky is suggested by a background of mother-of-pearl, hand-painted in bluish shades. Floating at different heights, mother-of-pearl clouds compose a subtle palette of greys. The graceful creatures stand out against it, their colors produced by miniature painting. While the swallow in engraved white gold is soberly clad in black, white and blue, the butterflies display joyful gradations of color: from white to pink, yellow to orange and red to yellow.

Reflecting Van Cleef & Arpels’ attention to detail, the dial’s story continues on the back of the case in decoration of great refinement. Once again, different techniques come together to create a poetic scene: the gold background is engraved with a swallow flying through the skies, while the oscillating weight is adorned with three lacquered butterflies. Turning according to the movements of the wrist, they seem to flutter between clouds delicately engraved on the underside of the sapphire glass.

The Poetry of Time™

Ever faithful to a poetic view of life, Van Cleef & Arpels has introduced a distinctive dimension to the field of watchmaking: that of dreams and emotion. The wonders of the watchmaker’s craft – accomplished in the workshops of Switzerland – are used to bring a story to life on the dial. To express these values and the themes that are so unique to Van Cleef & Arpels, the Maison has employed master watchmakers and traditional craft skills. Lapidaries, enamelers, engravers and stone-setters have used their ancestral savoir-faire to embellish complication watches and exceptional dials.
Van Cleef & Arpels draws from its enchanted world to depict a moment of grace, luck or beauty with each creation, offering a dreamlike perspective on the passage of time.

Poetic Complications™ collection
To celebrate its centenary in 2006, Van Cleef & Arpels imagined a watch in which the hours would slip by in step with the seasons. The Poetic Complications collection – a new way of viewing time – was born. Each model combines creative inventiveness with a sense of wonder. Retrograde, 24-hour, quantième de saison or 5-minute repeater movements enable time to be measured by a stroll through Paris, a starry night sky, the path of planets, a flutter of butterflies or a lovers’ meeting. Beyond their technical prowess, these intricate mechanisms offer precious moments of emotion, marked by the imagination of Van Cleef & Arpels.

Gold engraving
Engraving is a traditional watchmaking skill that enables the decoration of a dial to be embellished with effects of depth and relief. The general outline is first carved into a golden plate to form a preliminary sketch of the motif. With great intricacy, the material is then incised with a succession of tiny grooves.
The work is done by hand, using tools known as gravers that are sometimes specially made for the purpose by the craftsman himself. They can create a range of effects: highlighting the lines of a drawing, reproducing a texture or creating varied degrees of shine.

Miniature painting
Inspired by the art of the miniature, which reached its heyday between the 16th and 18th centuries, miniature painting is a skill which only few craftsmen have mastered: it calls for patience, intricacy and long artistic training. The miniaturist needs to be a talented painter in order to compose the original design freehand, using a palette of colors and a very fine sable brush.
They sketch out the main outline of the design beneath a binocular microscope, before firing the dial for an hour at 80°C to dry this preliminary work. This stage fixes the color and unifies the colored surface by removing any traces of the brush strokes. Successive layers of paint – each of them calling for an additional firing – enable effects of transparency to be created while contributing to an impression of depth in a wealth of detail and nuance.
The precision of the drawing, the delicacy of the gradations and the finesse of the finished result instill each painting with unique emotion: they are genuine miniature masterpieces. Van Cleef & Arpels often uses this technique on mother-of-pearl, along with gold.