Midnight Nuit Lumineuse

Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie 2016

This year, Van Cleef & Arpels illustrates the inventiveness and fairylike quality of its watchmaking universe with two emblematic examples of the Maison’s savoir-faire: jewels that tell the time and Poetic Complications™ watches. Its High Jewelry expertise has given rise to creations that capture the hours in their most precious finery. Time confides itself like a secret or glitters #amboyantly, magni$ed by precious stones.
From diamonds to colored sapphires , gems al so punctuate the Poetic Complications collection. Taking pride of place this year with a particularly rich selection, the latter brings together the refinement of traditional crafts and technical sophistication to express the sources of Van Cleef & Arpels’ inspiration. In bringing to life a ballet of butter#ies, a swallow or a graceful fairy, the Maison has deployed unbounded creativity to reinvent the Poetry of Time™, charged with enchantment and emotion.

High Jewelry Watches

Genuine jewels and enchanting timepieces, the High Jewelry watches depict the passage of the hours with sparkling poetry. From nature to ballet and couture, Van Cleef & Arpels’ cherished themes $nd expression in the meeting of two skills: the measurement of time and the excellence of jewelry savoir-faire.
While the ingenuity of invisible clasps and assembly techniques brings #exibility and elegance to the bracelets, the stones are carefully selected and matched in keeping with the most stringent criteria. Diamonds are revealed in all their brilliance, thanks to subtle plays of cuts and settings.
This year, the Maison also gives a special place of honor to its secret watch tradition. Dating from the 1920s, these timepieces surprise and appeal for their light-hearted aspects: chatelaines that take on the appearance of jewels, #owers and stone-studded leaves that rise to reveal a dial. These elegant and inventive pieces enabled their wearers to tell the time with discretion, in accordance with the customs of the era.
Today, the Maison breathes new life into this game of hide and seek and offers a secret space to each second. Sliding open an invisible drawer or raising a precious tassel evoke a personal sense of time, alive with intimate memories.

By the light of the stars
Van Cleef & Arpels enriches its Poetic Astronomy™ theme with a watchmaking innovation, eliciting new emotions. Inspired by the glittering of the heavens, the Maison dreamed of actually illuminating the dial of a Poetic Complications™ watch in a mechanical way.
Made real, the scene unfolds against a background of aventurine glass, where diamond stars shine. Among the various constellations traced out in white miniature painting, that of the Unicorn – or Monoceros – can be seen, in an allusion to the enchanted world of Van Cleef & Arpels. Distinguished by a horn on its forehead, this mythical animal fuelled the Maison’s imagination in the 1970s and continues to do so today. Here, as if by magic, it lights up in a remarkable way thanks to the six diamonds that punctuate its outline.

A movement that generates electricity mechanically
The sense of surprise and wonder instilled by the Midnight Nuit Lumineuse watch has its origin in the phenomenon of piezoelectricity, studied since the 18th century and now used for the #rst time in the Poetic Complications collection. The term refers to the ability of certain materials to accumulate an electric charge when they are subjected to mechanical stress.
The Midnight Nuit Lumineuse watch contains a strip of ceramic which, when caused to vibrate by the movement, mechanically generates electrical energy.
This is used to power six electroluminescent diodes which – on demand –
back-light the six diamonds visible on the dial.
The animation creates a luminous motif for about four seconds, while the
passage of time continues to be displayed on the dial. At any moment, the
hour – discretely indicated by a retrograde hand in white gold – can be read
from a scale graduated up to 12.

Poetic Astronomy

Dazzled by the spectacle of the heavenly orbs, Van Cleef & Arpels pays homage to the emotion they instill with Poetic Astronomy. From the cycles of the sun and moon to the fairylike glitter of a night sky or the dreamscape of the constellations: the wonders of the universe have inspired creations that combine the poetry of the stars and the measurement of time. Already present in the Maison’s Jewelry and High Jewelry pieces, the theme of the cosmos spread to Watchmaking from 2008 onwards, notably with the Lady Arpels™ Jour Nuit, Midnight in Paris and Midnight Planétarium™ watches. Since then, the Poetic Complications and Extraordinary Dials™ collections have been enriched with new creations that interpret some of Van Cleef & Arpels’ cherished themes, including symbols of luck and representations of the sky. By turning its gaze to the firmament, the Maison has renewed its highly personal vision of time, with its suggestion of voyages and dreams.