Geneva, Switzerland
Swiss luxury watch brand Vacheron Constantin teams up with the museum of Louvre and presents to the public a limited edition of 20 pieces all inspired by four ancient civilizations.
“There is an authenticity to our partnership with the Louvre,” says Vacheron Constantin CEO Louis Ferla.
“It goes beyond making watches, there is an exchange of knowledge there and it is a fantastic source of inspiration for us.”
In close collaboration with the Louvre’s curatorial teams, Vacheron Constantin’s designers and developers have come together to create a new series of Métiers d’Art watches directly inspired by emblematic masterpieces of the Louvre.
The Ancient Egyptian Empire, the Persian Empire of the Achaemenids, Hellenistic Greece of the Antigonid Dynasty, and the Roman Empire of the Julio-Claudians are the civilizations celebrated in this collection.
The Sphynx of Tanis model— the work of cutting the stone with polished surfaces is admirable in its precision.
The main dial is made of enamel whose deep color, is obtained after six firings in the kiln.
The necklace is trimmed with petals that are reproduced in champlevé enamel sprinkled with inclusions to give the outer frieze an aged appearance.
Under it, a winged hawk with a ram’s head appears and the plumage of its wings is picked up on the dial – again in champlevé enamel.
The last cultural component is the sapphire crystal bearing the gold applique and engraved by metallization with hieroglyphic inscriptions from a cartouche of the sphynx of Tanis.
The prominent frieze of lions was thus a declaration of royal power, embodied by the king of animals.
Made of siliceous glazed bricks that are bound with lime mortar, this decoration mingling realism, and powerful stylization is exemplary of masterpieces of Achaemenid Persian art.
The ornamentation, consisting of a juxtaposition of triangles, is made of engraved metal and champlevé enamel with “aging” inclusions.
The writing elements engraved by metallization on the sapphire crystal are one of the first written texts by Darius upon his arrival in power.
In the Victory of Samothrace model, the drapery of the statue, ruffled by the wind with a large flow of fabric falling in deep folds between the legs, represented a major difficulty for the engraver in charge of reproducing all its subtleties.
The center of the main dial is enameled in brown, a color that is very difficult to achieve and required a mixture of rare enamels as well as six firings in the kiln.
The periphery features grisaille enameling depicting the decorative friezes taken from two Greek vases.
The ancient Greek script engraved by metallization on the sapphire crystal bearing the applied Victory is taken from a second AD votive stele discovered in Samothrace.
Octavian Augustus’bust is a carved gold applique offering a striking sight in which the drape of the cape accompanying the breastplate, secured by a fibula, echoes the curling locks held by the oak crown.
The center of the dial is enameled in blue-green, while its periphery is adorned with stone micro-mosaic.
This is the famous fourth-century mosaic discovered in Lod, Israel, that served as the inspiration for the ornamentation motifs found on the dial periphery.
No less than seven different types of stones – 660 in all – were used to compose this micro-mosaic.
“What was difficult about this was the execution of the watches,” Ferla says of the immense technical challenges.
“You have two sources of inspiration on the watch – the main subject, and then you get all the character. We had to do a few things a few times, such as the facial expressions, because we were not happy with the rendering – mostly, it looked too modern, but we had the luxury to postpone some of our projects until we judged it to be perfect.”
Project: Métiers d’Art Collection by Vacheron Constantin x Louvre
Designer: Vacheron Constantin
Manufacturer: Vacheron Constantin
