Les
Heures Fabuleuses de Cartier
Two of a
kind
A veritable collection of
jewellery timepieces featuring 41 pieces, including 23 unique
editions, the Heures
Fabuleuses de Cartier make light of reality; enchanted tales to be told as time
is transformed, the stage for a spirited bestiary whose secrets and tricks
conjure a time that is more than it seems.
A collection that
proclaims, like a Surrealist manifesto: “This is not a watch”.
Yet time is their destiny,
diverted along the way, for the fun of it, the love of intrigue. A very feminine
seduction from the most extravagant jewels, amazingly precious, inscribed in
the Cartier tradition of ingenious watchmaking yet poised for transformation,
the guarantee of supreme elegance.
These watches are uniquely
two of a kind – a jewellery performance when a diamond snake slips off the face
to glide over a lapel as a brooch. And what hides behind this tortoise-shell studded
with diamond scales? Illusion, now you see it, now you don’t – Cartier is a watchmaking
wizard with the gift of conjuring up extraordinary pieces.
The most precious watches,
jewels of excellence and savoir-faire: the expertise of the watchmaker, who
makes a diamond phoenix oscillate in time with the movement, and the skill of
the jeweller, who transforms a chain into a delicate brooch.
Time
is elusive
Playing on an apparition,
miracles of jewellery, Cartier pictures a metamorphosis of time, watches that
can play any role, now a brooch, now a pendant, now a watch – or all three at a
time. Tripling their functions for a fantastically playful bestiary, a snake, a
frog, na elephant, the elusive heroes of a watchmaking fable where time is the
jewel in the crown.
This is not a watch, it is
a volatile peacock, whose flight releases it from its mother-of-pearl marquetry
face. A bejewelled brooch set with brilliant-cut diamonds on a ruby flower framed
by nephrite jade leaves. Sometimes it alights on the face, clipping itself on
to form a figure in the round whose volumes carve out time. Sometimes it leaves
the hours free to reveal their mother-of-pearl field, blooming with sculpted
white gold, studded with red and green in a hail of dazzling brilliant-cut
diamonds.
Les
Indomptables de Cartier
-
Peacock watch
- Numbered edition limited to
60 pieces
Case in 18-carat
rhodium-plated white gold set with brilliant-cut diamonds
Brooch in 18-carat
rhodium-plated white gold: peacock in 18-carat rhodium-plated white gold set
with brilliant-cut diamonds, with a flower in natural ruby crystal, leaf in
engraved nephrite jade, and eye set with a sapphire
Dial in 18-carat
rhodium-plated white gold, mother-of-pearl marquetry, flowers in 18-carat
rhodium-plated white gold sculpted and enamelled in relief, a shower of
adornments in 18-carat rhodium-plated white gold set with brilliant-cut diamonds
Sword-shaped hands in
rhodium-plated steel
Strap in white brushed
calfskin
Double adjustable folding
buckle in 18-carat rhodium-plated white gold set with brilliant-cut diamonds
Quartz movement
Time
is unpredictable
The secret is in the art, the art is in the secret,
beautiful both inside and out, the surprise hidden within. Time concealed by
the splendour of a morganite, a bird’s plumage, a nest of diamonds, poetic
variations around a now unpredictable time, around which Cartier cultivates all
the mystery. The hours appear or disappear on a whim or a fancy, precious hours
whose jewelled refinements vie with creative imagination.
Time to see, time to hide, a tortoise plays with the
hours that it guards. A sentinel on which a morganite is set, a gemstone shell
that can open to reveal an oval silver watch dial. Is it a jewel? Is it a
watch? Where is time hiding? It is true Cartier tradition to dream up watches
that keep secrets, like this tortoise whose rounded shell, a veritable sculpture
of diamonds, opens onto the surprise of dissimulated time.
And what if a ring could tell the time? Nothing here
implies that it might: neither the ruffled diamond feathers, nor the
mother-of-pearl beak, nor the emerald eyes of a perfectly harmonious parrot.
The illusion seems faultless: how astonishing to discover a confidential watch
face, imperceptibly hidden, mysteriously revealed as a total surprise.
Parrot watch and ring
Watch and ring in rhodium-plated white gold set with
brilliant-cut diamonds, beak in mother-of-pearl, eyes set with emeralds Quartz
movement.
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