Crash Tigrée

THE CARTIER MÉTIERS D’ART

CRASH TIGRÉE MÉTAMORPHOSES WATCH

For Cartier, time is a game. A domain of unlimited creativity to explore the range of its skills and research of its designs. To continuously expand its stylistic grammar with curiosity and open-mindedness.

Created in 1967, deep in the heart of Swinging London, the Cartier Crash watch captures the vibrant energy of the city at the time. With its asymmetrical dial, it revolutionised the aesthetic codes of watchmaking. Systematically released in a highly confidential series, it has the luxury of being exclusive.

This year, craftsmen at the Maison des Métiers d’Art are exploring the dial’s potential and making it the source of creative expression of Cartier’s craftsmanship. The creative challenge was ambitious: the volume of this singular watch had to be used to capture the organic and vivid character of its lines and evoke an animal presence. An abstract, evocative presence, inspired by African wildlife that is so dear to Cartier.

The impressive result inspired further interpretations: the tiger, crocodile, water or shell... Yet isn’t this also a metamorphosis? The diamonds appear to gradually cover the entire watch, leaving the precious metal on the bezel completely bare. Cartier creates these possibilities, and many more, depending on how one sees it.

Cartier oHers us this complete freedom of interpretation by using the richness of its expertise and its stylistic grammar: the art of jewellery, combined with enamel at the highest level and the choice of blue and green, Cartier’s signature colour combination.

To bring this watch to life, the craftsmen used several, often unprecedented, enamelling techniques. The enamel can be adapted according to the needs: sometimes opaque, sometimes translucent or used in gradations, but also worked on silver pailletes and engraving. All eHects are possible, with complete mastery.

On the bezel, the stripes are made of champlevé enamelling. The stripes are separated with lines of set diamonds to contrast and shine, and the winding crown is set with an inverted pavilion diamond - signature of the jeweller.

The dial succeeds in combining artistic crafts used to make this watch: metal engraving, enamelling and setting. First engraved, the scale or stripe motifs are enamelled on silver pailletes. To make these shades of blue and green, the enameller uses cobalt oxide (for the blue) and copper oxide (for the green).

To enamel this piece, it needs to be put through the kiln more than 10 times between a temperature of 700°C to 750°C, depending on the desired colour. First the under- layers need to be worked on, followed by the enamel visible on the surface. These are manipulated according to firing temperatures, from highest to lowest: navy blue first, then turquoise, and finally translucent green.

A timepiece available in a limited edition of 50 individually numbered watches.

THE CARTIER MENAGERIE

At Cartier, time is expansive and polymorphous. Cartier’s vision is to make time a free domain, a place to explore and reveal its new facets, while it reinvents the language of its techniques and artistic crafts.

In this new edition of Watches&Wonders, Cartier’s craftsmen have combined their knowledge of enamel, marquetry and gold bead granulation.

They have drawn their inspiration from Cartier’s menagerie, more precisely from the great animals of Africa: the panther, the Maison’s emblematic feline since 1914, the giraHe and the zebra. Powerful and majestic animals, whose elegance is captured by enamellers and jewellers.

Three watches that combine Cartier’s expertise in craftsmanship with its dual approach to wildlife: figurative and abstract.