Escale collection: Louis Vuitton makes a stopover in Mount Fuji
On the highest peak of the High Watchmaking industry, some watches aren’t limited to the measuring of time: they provide a stage for it. With this Escale au Mont Fuji pocket watch, the Louis Vuitton Escales Autour du Monde collection is enriched with a new masterpiece where minute repeater, tourbillon and automata module are combined with engraving and Grand Feu enamel. Capturing a Japanese dawn in a white gold jewel box – and making Mount Fuji a temple of time – required more than 1,000 hours of work. Very impressive!
An animated dawn
Some watches show the time. Others express a moment frozen in time. That’s the case of this Escale au Mont Fuji model that offers an instant out of time – when the sun rises behind the perfect silhouette of the sacred volcano. On the dial, a Japanese landscape unfolds, smeared with pastel hues: powder pink, celestial blue, diaphanous yellow. You could almost hear the light breathe. At 12 o’clock, a wind rose slowly rotates on a gradated sky sprinkled with Monogram Flowers. A fishermen’s boat glides on the river from right to left. Miniature trunks open and close on the deck, revealing whittled flowers. At the helm, Ebisu – a popular Japanese figure symbolizing prosperity who protects fishermen – holds a fishing rod and a tai sea bream like ritual attributes.
Nine sakura flowers carved out of yellow gold and made of pink enamel rustle as the automata module rolls. This miniature theatre composed of four different animations is powered by a Jacquemart mechanism remarkably precise. Not a single stiff nor purely decorative item in sight: the whole piece vibrates with life. The white gold bezel set with 60 baguette-cut sapphires stretches the sky’s gradation. The case, with a height of 19 mm and a diameter of 50 mm, is engraved on the case band with a seigaiha pattern strewn with Monogram Flowers that seem to melt into the waves. The domed sapphire crystal treated with an anti-glare coating protects this animated landscape, water-resistant up to 30 meters.
A secret mechanical architecture
At the back, poetic views are replaced by architecture. The manual winding manufacture calibre incorporates a minute repeater, a tourbillon and an automata module. It chimes the hours, quarters and minutes on demand, while the hands set at the back free the dial from any functional constraint. The movement is composed of 561 parts and 68 jewels. Vibrating at a 3Hz frequency (21,600 vibrations per hour), it also offers a power reserve of 8 days. Five hundred hours were required to assemble and hand-finish it entirely.
Seven hundred hand-bevelled inner angles, a ratchet wheel that required three weeks of carving, mirror-polished monobloc gongs and a tourbillon cage thoroughly worked. Bridges adorned with Côtes de Genève waves, a snailed barrel and flame-blued hands: every surface captures the light. Yet, all these details aren’t just here for the sake of complexity – they serve the pristine atmosphere of the scene.
When Métiers d’Art cast light to Mount Fuji
This dial is a concentrate of Métiers d’Art excellence. Each detail – Ebisu’s moustache, the folds on his clothes, the fish’s scales, the fishnets – were chiseled with self-made tools by a master enameller. The mobile elements of the piece were weighted with precision to result in a perfectly balanced automata module.
The sky is made of enamel layers coated on top of each other. Forty successive firings were needed to obtain this wide range of enamel techniques: miniature, champlevé, paillonné, Grand Feu enamel… They display a gradation of 33 different pastel hues, in which slightly protruding white flowers seem to merge. The glistening river presents unique liquid-like depths thanks to a leaf of silver inserted between two layers of enamel.
Miniature-painted Mount Fuji seems to dissolve in a subtle mist. The trees were drawn with an extremely thin brush, thus modulating clear and blurry lines to create a perspective. The only enamelling process required three hundred hours of work.
This unique piece required more than 1,000 hours of work in total. Hanging from a white gold chain, it is delivered with a trunk made in Asnières as well as a doctor’s-style bag inspired by a 1906 Motor’s bag – both are dressed with light blue leather. More than a simple pocket watch, it’s a mechanical and ringing landscape. A chiming sunrise. A mountain still, yet full of life.
Unique piece – Price upon request
See the technical specifications sheet of the Escale au Mont Fuji Pocket Watch
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