Blasting Off With Louis Vuitton Tambour Jacquemart Minute Repeater
In the highest echelons of watchmaking, respect is not earned by hype, sales volume, or the number of gemstones affixed to a watch case. Instead, the greatest esteem goes to the ateliers who create the most over-the-top, labour-intensive pieces for just a single owner: the coveted pièce unique. Whether crammed with dozens of complications (functions on a watch that display anything beyond hours and minutes) or dedicated to just a few highly advanced functions, these singular creations — often commissioned by a specific customer — are what establish watchmakers at the top of their game. Louis Vuitton’s Tambour Jacquemart Minute Repeater “200 Years,” an outer space-themed pièce unique featuring a cathedral gong minute-repeater and a set of handengraved automatons that move across an exquisitely enamelled dial, is exactly that sort of watch.
Louis Vuitton was founded in 1854 and became a global luxury juggernaut with its iconic luggage before staking its claim as an influential fashion house in the 1990s. In the early years of the 21st century, the brand diversified once again, releasing Louis Vuitton’s first house-made timepiece, the Tambour, in 2002. Since then, Louis Vuitton’s watchmaking division has only grown in strength. In 2011, it acquired the revered Swiss watchmaking atelier La Fabrique du Temps, whose principals, Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini had designed the groundbreaking Spin Time watch a few years prior. Created to celebrate the 200th birthday of the brand’s namesake founder, Louis Vuitton’s Tambour Jacquemart Minute Repeater “200 Years,” marks a new high point in watchmaking for both La Fabrique du Temps and Louis Vuitton.
“This new Tambour Jacquemart Minute Repeater is the tribute that La Fabrique du Temps wanted to pay to Louis Vuitton,” says Michel Navas, master watchmaker at La Fabrique du Temps. “The mechanical masterpiece explores the journey theme [and] our great Maison’s core expertise. It’s an odyssey comparable to that of Louis Vuitton in contemporary fine watchmaking.”
More than two years in the making, the watch showcases two extremely advanced complications: automatons that move within the dial, known as jacquemarts, and a minute-repeater, a function that chimes the time via a set of tiny gongs and hammers at the press of a button. The watch is housed in a large white gold and titanium case intended to evoke an astronaut’s helmet, whose large 46.8 mm opening mimics the spacefarer’s view into the cosmos.
To create the galactic scene on the dial, Louis Vuitton tapped two of Switzerland’s most respected craftspeople, engraver Dick Steenman and enameler Anita Porchet. When the push button is activated, the nine handcarved white gold jacquemarts come to life: the rocket takes off and opens to reveal a payload of three diamond “passengers,” the planets spin on their axis, and the monogram flower rotates among a constellation of moving stars.
“The originality of this composition spurred us to surpass ourselves,” says Navas of Steenman’s delicately carved figures. “The shape of the spaceship and the miniature planets required special attention, [and] extreme meticulousness.”
No less painstakingly rendered, the background is created by carefully applying layers of different-coloured enamel to the dial and blasting it in a kiln — an extremely arduous task. “In order to enhance the relief and depth of space, Anita Porchet combined several techniques, [including] enamel miniature painting, to portray the imaginary planet, with opaque and transparent enamels in the nebulae surrounding the stars, [and] spangles making the space sky twinkle,” Navas says.
Making the whole thing run is the LV200 calibre, which was assembled by Louis Vuitton in its Geneva workshop and is wound via a bejewelled pocket watch-style crown at 12 o’clock. The manual-wind mechanical movement is made up of 480 components and includes the cathedral gong minute repeater. Despite the artistry displayed on the dial, the rear of the watch is almost as compelling, thanks to a case back that reveals the intricate mechanism through a sapphire crystal display window.
Hand-built, hand-decorated, and presented in a custom-made Louis Vuitton trunk in the same galactic deep blue as the dial, the Louis Vuitton Tambour Jacquemart Minute Repeater “200 years” places Louis Vuitton in the company of a handful of top-tier watchmaking brands with the know-how and resources to execute a true pièce unique.
It also makes for an appropriate birthday gift to the founder’s memory, and an unmistakable message to anyone in the market for a one-of-a-kind work of horological art: If you can dream it, Louis Vuitton can build it.
Photography Credit: Regis Golay, Federal Studio.
