A Guardian Moving Three Centimetres Away Each Year: The Task Given to the Moon, and the Rolex “Perpetual Padellone”
The Moon gives the Earth its seasons, stirs its oceans and holds its axis steady. It does none of this …
Masterpieces
Explore Masterpieces: watch stories, craftsmanship and independent editorial from FLÂNEUR.
The Sky of the North Sea, the Grain of Italy: the Van Speyk Courage Phases de Lune
For a ship to pass over rocks, the sea has to rise. What raises it is not the wind. It …
The Half Second That Cost a Man His Job: the Louis Moinet 1816 Chronograph
An assistant at an observatory was dismissed for recording the passage of stars wrongly. Twenty years later it turned out …
The First Solid Matter in the Solar System: the Hublot MP-14 Origin by Jeff Koons
The case of this watch is sapphire, and the chemical name for sapphire is aluminium oxide. It happens to be …
Monument to a Breath: Jeff Koons, the Philosophy of Pop and the Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog
A shape a clown twists out of a party balloon in thirty seconds became one of the most expensive objects …
Diamonds Older Than the Sun and a Man Walking on the Moon: the Louis Moinet Moon Meteor
Three meteorites cross this dial. One of them contains nanometre diamonds made by stars that died before the Sun was …
Twelve Stones and Four and a Half Billion Years: the Louis Moinet Cosmopolis
Twelve separate meteorites sit on one dial. Some came from the Moon, some from Mars, some from a belt that …
The Webs of Creation and the Wheels of Time: From the Ocean Floor to the Top of the Forest, the Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art Six
Six watches, six animals, six separate crafts. From the manta ray to the tiger, every dial in this set is …
A Body on a Dial Without Colour: From the River at Dawn to an Embossed Sheet, Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art “Papercroc”
There is not one colour on this dial. A crocodile lies on white cotton paper and the entire figure is …
An Animal Made of Lines: From the Silence of the Forest to the Point of a Needle, Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art “Tigerbroidery”
A tiger’s pattern is a fingerprint; no two exist anywhere. The most honest way to render an animal already made …
A Scale and a Feather Are the Same Substance: From the Dark of the Forest to the Plumassier’s Tweezers, Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art “Feathersnake”
There is a snake on this dial, and it has no scales. In the place of every scale sits a …
The Clear Sight of the Heights: From a Gliding Shadow to the Grain of Wood, Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art “Woodenwings”
The falcon on this dial is neither painted nor carved. Hundreds of microscopic veneer pieces cut from twelve different woods …
The Architecture of Blue Blood: From a Kelp Forest to the Tip of a Flame, Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art “Glassoctopus”
The octopus at the centre of this dial is neither gold nor enamel. It is glass, shaped at the torch …
The Soul That Wakes in the Heart of the Forest: Hayy, Tolstoy’s Confession and Biver’s Two Tales of Day and Night
Two watches, one world. The day in rose gold, the night in platinum. Every surface of both cases was cut …
The Beat of the Planet’s Blue Lungs: From Ocean Currents to a Folded Sheet, Vacheron Constantin Métiers d’Art “Oraygami”
Six manta rays glide across this dial. Not one of them is metal. Every one is paper, folded by hand …
Hearing the Hour in the Dark: Thinness at War with Sound, and the Piaget “Polo Minute Repeater”
For a striking watch, thinness is not a virtue but an obstacle. Sound wants air, mass and volume. Piaget fitted …
The Illusion of the Mask, the Victory of the Will: the Ulysse Nardin Classico “Carnival of Venice”
Two masked figures stand in the middle of the dial. Pull the slide on the flank of the case and …
The Crown of the Streets and the Pulse of Humanity: the Raymond Weil Freelancer Basquiat Special Edition
One chronograph pusher carries a copyright sign, the other a dollar sign. On the screw-down crown sits a yellow crown. …
Why Do Dogs Play Poker: Coolidge’s Mind and the Andersen and Chaykin Joker Automaton
Coolidge dressed human hypocrisy in dogs. A hundred and fifteen years later Svend Andersen and Konstantin Chaykin sat the lunatics …
The Clock That Does Not Come Out of the Box: Handing the Labour Back, and the Maison Alcée × MB&F “Nostromo”
This table clock does not arrive working. Open the case and you find more than two hundred separate components, a …
Describing a Colour With a Number: What Cannot Be Transmitted, and the Speake-Marin “Tourbillon Royal Blue”
There is no way to tell another person what blue you are seeing. Printers could not solve that impossibility, so …
The Architecture of the Heavens and of the Camel: Three Voices on the AKHOR “Nour La Lumière”
Three people are looking at a watch lying in the middle of a table in Geneva: a philosopher, a biologist …
Beginning Again on a Monday: A Master’s Return, and the Renaud Tixier “Monday Organica”
A house naming its first watch after a Monday is not making a joke. Seven watches for seven days, each …
The Artificer Behind the Wheels: the Moritz Grossmann Backpage Tremblage and the Cosmic Watchmaker
In this watch the movement does not hide behind the caseback. It has been mirrored, turned inside out and laid …