Ballon Bleu de Cartier Enamel granulation with panther motif

CARTIER FINE WATCHMAKING BREAKS NEW FRONTIERS

Fine Watchmaking and High Jewellery: the confluence of Cartier’s two founding fields will be the highlight of the 2016 edition of the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie. A unique creative partnership has thus been initiated between High Jewellery, with all the flamboyance of its gemstones, the power of its style and the expertise of its craft, and Fine Watchmaking, with its attention to detail and its emblematic watches and complications.

Master watchmakers and master jewellers, facing the same constraints and driven by the same ambitions, merge their skills to create five extraordinary jewellery watches on the boundaries of both worlds. The panther tries its hand at the complication game, with two watches that transpose Cartier’s supreme expertise into a narrative register. Enamel granulation, the latest addition to the collection of Cartier artistic crafts, introduces a rich diversity of chromatic range to the Maison’s iconic feline. Five Fine Watchmaking signature watches illustrate the creative dynamism of the 2016 Salon, hoisting the twin banners of technical prowess and aesthetic progress to new heights. Finally, since experimenting with shape has always been at the heart of Cartier watchmaking, the Maison has decided to unveil the new Hypnose and Drive de Cartier watches at the Salon.

With a focus on thirteen distinctive creations and two new collections, traditional definitions have been shaken up in the celebration of a new multi-faceted expertise that combines High Jewellery and Fine Watchmaking. The mysterious has extended its magic beyond the limits of imagination, blurring previously finite boundaries in an exploration of new creative territories. The force of Cartier’s watchmaking expertise can be measured by the depth of the emotion it inspires.

A DIALOGUE OF WORKSHOPS

High Jewellery and Fine Watchmaking in an extraordinary, unprecedented collaboration

For over 160 years, Fine Watchmaking and High Jewellery have written the history of Cartier side by side. Today, these two worlds come together.

With the audacity to break the rules of separating genres, this collaboration is driven by a vision of creative territory in which diverse skills complement one another to their mutual advantage. The movement has been ushered into existence by Cartier, whose unique and decisive view assures the value of such exchanges.

Thus, amid the secrecy of its workshops, Cartier creates rare and precious objects that contribute to the beauty of our world. Here, the dialogue established between complementary skills yields extraordinary results.

By working together, craftsmen surpass their own limitations to blaze a new path. Through their hands and under their skilled eyes, miracles take on shape and colour, volume and brilliance. The ultimate achievement is the creation of emotion, through pioneering curiosity and unlimited boldness – the authentic Cartier signatures.

A chromatic-based artistic craft: enamel granulation

A newcomer in the repertoire of Cartier artistic crafts, enamel granulation relies on a combined mastery of both the art of enamelling and the art of Etruscan granulation, a goldsmith’s technique dating back to the first half of the third millennium B.C. The Ballon Bleu de Cartier enamel granulation watch with panther motif has been entirely hand-made at the Cartier Maison des Métiers d’Art, inaugurated in 2014 in La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland.

BALLON BLEU DE CARTIER Enamel granulation with panther motif

For this creation, our master enamellers have drawn inspiration from the principles of granulation, which consist of creating minuscule beads of gold and then mounting them on a plaque. Following the same process, the enamel was first worked in pieces or in powder form, then stretched out into delicate threads which are chiselled off into fine flakes and heated by blowpipe, until they are also formed into beads one by one. The size of these beads depends on the original diameter of the enamel thread from which they have been made.

They are then assembled together in accordance with the motif concerned, the colour tone and desired volume. This technique is all the more delicate to carry out because the craftsman needs to take into account the details of the fusion temperature for each colour of enamel used. A very large number of firings are therefore required, sometimes involving over thirty operations, and with a clearly-defined order for placing the beads and enamelling. Nearly a month of work was required to complete this piece.

The result is utterly stupefying: a panther’s head that is strikingly lifelike in appearance and expression, in which Cartier reproduces the volume required, the depth of its gaze, the prickle of its whiskers and the smoothness of its coat.

This exceptional piece bears witness to the creative vitality of the Maison des Métiers d’Art and its ability to encourage collaboration between engravers, polishers, enamellers, jewellers, gem-setters and watchmakers to create a single spectacular piece.