Van Cleef & Arpels doesn’t have typical origins—the company is the product of a star-crossed love story. Two jewellery families were brought together when Alfred Van Cleef and Estelle Arpels wed in 1895. Nearly a decade later, the Maison was launched in Paris, the city of love.
This romantic spirit has remained at the heart of Van Cleef & Arpels’ creations, with small details capturing this affection.
On the award-winning Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux watch, a Poetic Complications piece unveiled in 2010, a story of two lovers takes place as they meet to kiss on a bridge in Paris. Four new watches showcase the 2010 design with backgrounds depicting different times of day, with diamond and sapphire encrusted straps.
Taking inspiration from this design, the Maison has reimagined the story of the Parisian lovers with the new Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automate watch. The man and woman, appearing at the forefront of the layered watch face, embrace while dancing in a guinguette, an open-air café common in Paris. String lights hang over them as they glide toward one another to meet at noon and midnight daily—this action can be triggered whenever desired by pressing a button on the watch case.
To add natural movement to the white-gold lovers, the Maison’s artisans spent four years perfecting the unique mechanism.
In both Poetic Complications designs, a signature grisaille enamel technique is used to create dreamy watercolour sunsets, with scenery sculpted in gold and accented with diamonds. The patient layering of enamel requires hours of focus and dozens of kiln firings to achieve, making it a rare and highly skilled showing of savoir faire.
The Poetic Complications collection could only be dreamed up by the Maison’s artisans, who know how to meld high jewellery with fine watchmaking.
The collection, says Catherine Rénier, president and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels, embodies all the elements dear to the Maison, “its mechanical expertise and its attachment to métiers d’art, while expressing one of its founding sources of inspiration: love.”
Feature image by Arnaud Lajeunie.
