The Poetry of Motion At Van Cleef & Arpels

Millennia ago, scholars relied on the behavior of plants, animals, and the movement of celestial bodies to record the passage of time. There’s poetry to these natural phenomena – and this poetry is at the heart of Van Cleef & Arpels haute horlogerie. 

It All Begins with A Story

“We always start with a story,” says the maison’s Timepieces Director, Pascal Narbeburu, “which means we have to imagine things.” Indeed, even a casual look at Van Cleef & Arpels watches would inspire wonder among anyone with even an iota of appreciation for beauty; a closer inspection, in turn, will draw you into a magnificent world of Poetic Complications, where planets made out of gemstones, enameled butterflies and fairies whisper their stories at the flick of your finger. 

Take the Lady Arpels Brise d’Été, for instance. Here, two butterflies placed diametrically opposite from each other indicate the hours (for a.m. and p.m.), and the numerals are punctuated with diamond markers. The corolla flowers at the bottom of the dial, made from vallonné enamel and decorated with garnet pistils, also flutter on demand upon the gentle pressing of the pusher. 

“We captured the summer breeze and put it in a watch,” Narbeburu explains, “My team made sure that the flowers and butterflies were independent. So, to create the impression of flowers moving, we mounted them on the sapphire glass and linked them to the movement, which is located right at the base of the dial. This link is hidden behind the bezel [which is covered with diamonds, we must say], so it’s impossible to see.” But the technical challenges didn’t end there, Narbeburu continues, “The flowers had to move at a steady pace when activated, no matter how great the force applied to the pusher was. So, we had to invent a new mechanism and file a patent for it, because such technology didn’t exist before.” 

Automaton and L’Heure Florale

Automata – the mechanisms that bring these very sculptures to life (similar to those used in baroque-era clocks or music boxes) – is an expertise, for which Van Cleef & Arpels is celebrated. Since the maison’s conception in 1906, it’s been creating these pieces of machinery and, more recently, in collaboration with a renowned Swiss-based automaton maker François Junod, whose most notable creations include La Fée Ondine and Alexander Pushkin automata. The maison has put out many imaginative automata, like the Planétarium, Apparition des Baies, which debuted at Watches & Wonders 2024, and Lady Arpels Heures Florales (which won the prestigious GPHG Innovation award). 

“I will tell you a story about Heures Florales,” says Narbeburu, “The piece was inspired by an 18th-century Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, who, when admiring his garden, realized that different flower species opened at different times during the day. Hence, we thought a time-telling garden could be an interesting concept for a watch.” He then tells what feels like an odyssey of bringing the idea to life. "Originally, we wanted to have 12 flowers on the dial with one opening at one o’clock and then another one an hour later, and so on. Nicolas [Bos] (President of Van Cleef & Arpels) didn’t find it very exciting,” Narbeburu laughs. Two to three months later, his team returned to Bos with another proposal – this time, it imagined one flower opening at one o’clock, then, at two o’clock, it would close and two flowers would open, and so on. Yet, it still was too "simple". Eventually, the idea evolved into a three-cycle system, which utilized the previously mentioned operating principle but with three distinct types of flowers instead of one. So, when looking at Heures Florales now, you would see one type of flower responsible for the a.m., another one for the p.m., and the third one for the a.m. of the following day – a cycle that’s harder to pinpoint, which is indirectly responsible for the feeling that the watch runs on magic and not machinery. 

Enameled Excellence

It’s not just the gears and rotors that make Van Cleef & Arpel's creations. Enameling is another part of the maison’s savoir-faire, says Narbeburu, “This art form dates back thousands of years and is essential for creating compositions that have depth.” Since 1906, the maison has mastered all the ancestral enameling techniques, including plique-à-jour (used for translucent gradients) and grisaille (which creates gradients of white color using the Blanc de Limoges pigment, as seen, for example, in Pont des Amoureux Nuit). 

Van Cleef & Arpels also invented several new ones, like façonne, which allows the setting of three-dimensional enamel sculptures like stones (lest we forget, the enamel is nearly impossible to sculpt due to its brittle nature). “We created a special process, which combines the right temperature and the right amount of time [the piece has to spend in the kiln],” Narbeburu explains. The result of such an arduous process of inventing new techniques is most expressively shown in the Lady Arpels Jour Enchanté and Lady Arpels Nuit Enchanté (which also debuted at Watches & Wonders 2024) in the form of flower petals. 

As it transpires, innovating just for the sake of it isn’t Van Cleef & Arpel's modus operandi when it comes to watches. Instead, it's a tool that brings heartfelt stories to life from the sheer desire of imagining the unimaginable.