A MAGICAL GARDEN
With this miniature naturalist scene, the brand with twin stars transports us to a Zen garden, where time moves by before our astonished eyes. Craftsmanship and mechanical skill combine to create a magical timepiece.
This latest work, which combines Jaquet Droz’s artistry and mechanical expertise, is so stunning that there are no words to accurately describe its beauty. With the Magic Lotus Automaton, the Chaux-de-Fonds watchmaker infuses all of its poetic sensibilities into a fantastic scene where fauna and flora live peacefully. Lily pads and lotus flowers float across the blue ripples of a pond and a delicate dragonfly flies over a Zen garden in concert with an undulating carp.
This naturalist tapestry evokes the four seasons and the stages of life. They are symbolized by the lotus flower, which represents purity and rebirth. We follow the flower’s evolution on the Magic Lotus Automaton’s dial, as it blooms and wilts, from a sculpted and painted mother-of-pearl flower bud to a multi-petaled bloom with a yellow sapphire heart, which grows, floating on the crystalline waters until it becomes the pod which carries the seeds of future flowers, embodied in seven diamonds.
The white mother-of-pearl dial is divided into three tableaux. The first is a gold-bordered onyx dial, offset at 12 o’clock, which the lance-shaped hour and minute hands skim over. The second is a fixed disk with reeds and three lotus flowers crafted out of embossed and enameled gold. The final section is an outer ring with two animations: a carp (koi in Japanese) which seems to sweep the water with its tail, then dives and resurfaces, and a lotus flower with a center that alternates between different-colored stones (blue, yellow and ruby sapphires) each time it passes under the timekeeping dial.
This new timepiece from Jaquet Droz, for which four patent applications have been filed, comes to life thanks to the 2653 AT2 automatic caliber, which delivers a 68-hour power reserve, and the hand-winding automaton mechanism which powers a remarkable four-minute animation (eight full rotations of 30 seconds each). All of this is housed in a 43 mm red or gray gold casing of which 28 of each option are available.
Price: 216,000 CHF jaquet-droz.com
By Sharmila Bertin