DRAWING A STYLE
The linchpin of the Privé collection, which brings together creations with atypical silhouettes, the shaped watch from the Parisian house imagined in 1912 emerges from its hibernating reserve to impose its stylistic stamp on the watchmaking landscape.
Cartier watchmaking is above all a story of shapes, shapes often seen as singular in a world populated by round watches. The Tortue Chronographe Monopoussoir is making a comeback in the Privé collection that gathers creations with atypical silhouettes, sometimes inspired by ancient models and produced in very small series. Long a favorite with collectors in particular, this timepiece, whose contours evoke the protective breastplate worn by a tetrapod reptile on its belly, was imagined by Louis Cartier as early as 1912, and is coming out of its hibernation reserve this year.
The first version of this watch dates from 1928, the next… from 1998! In other words, the animal’s appearances are few and far between! For 2024, Cartier is presenting two versions, in platinum or white gold, each limited to just 200 pieces. Punctuated by a push-piece crown set with a cabochon sapphire or ruby, its curved case (43.7×34.8×10.2mm) has been slightly redesigned, its lugs lengthened and its profile refined. It houses the 1928 MC caliber, a new manual-winding movement specially developed for it, which is 4.3mm high, vibrates at the standard 4hz frequency and provides a 44-hour power reserve. Grained and lightly gilded or silvered opaline, housing black-lacquered or rhodium-plated Roman numerals, the dial curved with a railway track is marked by two azure counters, the small seconds at 9 o’clock and, at 3 o’clock, the minute totalizer powered by the central second hand. Its hollowed counterweight echoes the hollowed knob of the blued Breguet-type hour and minute hands.