Jaquet Droz Grande Heure Minute Medium
Jaquet Droz is pleased to announce two new additions to its "Hommage London1774" Collection: the Grande Heure Minute medium rehaute and the Grande Heure Minute medium email. In doing so, the Manufacture has struck a fabulous alliance between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary aesthetics.
Some people would call this a beautiful story, others a dream come true. Either way, the creations of the Manufacture's founder Pierre Jaquet Droz were always the stuff of legends. The son of peasants from the Swiss Jura Mountains, he started in 1738 a manufactuer that still bears his name. A watchmaking genius and a hard worker, he also produced musical snuffboxes, mechanical singing birds, and three spectacular humanoid automata ("The Musician", "The Artist", and :The Draughtsman") that established his reputation for exhilerating creativity. A man of vision, he was also ambitious and self-confident, opening a workshop in London in 1774.
The "Hommage London1774" collection was inspired by a sucess story rooted on the European Continent but also in London, which was then the cultural, economic, and political capital of an empire spanning the earth. The Grande Heure Minute medium presides over this collection, like a Muse. Its centered hours-minutes subdial is partnered by an off-centered seconds subdial at nine o'clock. The sweep of the seconds hand animates the handsome face of this exceptional timpiece at all times.
True to its reputation for inventiveness, drawing on springs of creativity that never runs dry, Jaquet Droz is presenting two new models, the Grande Heure Minute medium rehaut and the Grande Heure Minute medium email, in a Numerus Clausus edition limited to 88. Distinctive for their purity of design and generous size (41mm), both of these timepieces possess the understated beauty of a classic men's watch as well as bold, contemporary minimalism. It is a consummate expression of the codes that made Jaquet Droz famous, including the smooth-polished case, self-winding mechanical movement and secret signature.
Grande Heure Minute medium rehaute:
Stunning and mysterious, the Grande Heure Minute medium rehaute explores myriad watchmaking possibilities via shapes, material, and contrasts. Apllied roman numerals of black steel add an architectural component to the three-dimensional beauty of tis design by setting up a subtle interaction between the materials, the light and opaline dial. The small, brushed-steek subseconds subdial at nine-o'clock and its applied ring reinforce the graphic fullness of the Grande Heure Minute medium rehaute. Black matte surfaces engage in a chronomatic dialogue with glossy metal, as the smoothness of the dial contrasts with volumes forged from steel. This handsome watch is a poetic statement of the watchmaker's art, firmly anchored in the third millennium.
Grande Heure Minute email:
This timepiece summarizes what is most precious in watchmaking and its pure lines defy fickle fashion. The Grande Heure Minute medium email grants each passing instant elegance and modernity, two values at the core of the Jaquet Droz identity. Its "grande feu" enamelled dial is a feat of technical prowess courtesy of the master dial-makers at the Manufacture. It is like a blank page on which fleeting moment writes history. It has a finely textured surface where blued steel hands encounter delicately stylised Roman numerals. At nine o'clock, the seconds hand sweeps around the outer circle of the subdial, the enamel finely marked. It's like a game where black meets pure ivory. Reminiscent of another era, past or to come, the Grande Heure Minute medium email possesses a refinement that transcends time.
Plato once said: "Time is the moving image of immobile eternity". Jaquet Droz took this to heart when it created the Grande Heure Minute medium email and the Grande Heure Minute medium rehaute. Since the days of Antiquity, mankind has desired immortality. At last, a magnificent watch fulfills this dream.