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The end of both years is filled with a number of holidays worth celebrating: Thanksgiving, holidays, New Year’s Eve. For watch lovers, this season also marks Michel Parmigiani’s birthday. No, this doesn’t mean adding an extra line to your purchases include December, the other way around. Instead, Michel Parmigiani offers us an amazing new watch every time he adds another candle to his birthday cake.
In the past, this has given us watches, adding a limited-edition Toric (the first wristwatch designed by Parmigiani in 1996) and Les Roses Carrées, a collection of minute repeaters fostered through the famous 25th anniversary pocket watch of the same name. This year’s birthday party is monumental with the launch of another exceptional pocket watch: the Armoriale. This one-of-a-kind masterpiece features a chronograph, minute repeater and perpetual calendar with a moon phase, all housed in an 18-carat white gold case. Case showcasing the impressive work of the Grand Feu teeth.
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But there’s more to this pocket watch than just this list of impressive features. Less than 58. 2mm short of the real thing, it transports anyone looking at it to the region of northern Italy, where the Parmigiani family is originally from. Here we are located in the Palazzo Te in Mantua, a 16th-century royal palace strategically located at the crossroads of Milan, Genoa and Venice. Inside Palazzo Te, we head to the Hall of the Giants which presents the Fall of the Titans through the artist Giulio Romano. Renaissance paintings incorporate elements of architecture and nature, as well as the concord of the golden ratio, a precept that has long encouraged Parmigiani’s design technique.
To take us on this journey, Parmigiani enlisted the expertise of four “Golden Hands” craftsmen to perform the fashioning of the chain, engraving of the case, and enameling of the back case. Here, we see the work of Laurent Jolliet, Eddy Jaquet, Christophe Blandenier, and Vanessa Lecci, who famously executed the enamel work of Parmigiani’s La Rose Carrée pocket watch. According to Lecci the teamwork between her and master engravers Jaquet and Blandenier was like “dancing a beautiful waltz.”
“The clock traveled several times between me and the engravers, before glazing and engraving, so that I could combine the smaller main points; We talk to each other, we talk to each other about our respective technical issues. The support needs combine the complexity of our respective businesses,” Lecci tells Robb Report. It was a very symbiotic process.
Not surprisingly, this is a true joint effort, transforming Giulio Romano’s gigantic paintings into a pocket watch. The fall of the Titans depicts a moment in history told through the Latin poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses in which the god Jupiter launches his thunderbolts to destroy the Titans, causing the buildings to collapse and leaving the Titans desperate and desperate. For Lecci, it was imperative to reconcile this chaos.
“My palette is certainly a choice of colors based on the original work, but one of the challenges was accomplishing harmony between cold colors and warm colors to achieve something beautiful when the pocket watch is observed in its entirety because beauty soothes us; it makes us forget the chaos.”
In the end, he chose to paint with transparent enamels instead of opaque ones to better harmonize with the engraving of the metal. Here, each enamel color was integrated into more than six other particle sizes, and the application of each of the seven coats (a procedure that required about 50 hours of painting), he had to decide which one to use.
“It was a technical difficulty for me, but it was like a game of laughter in which I could win or lose everything by baking between each layer of color. Patience, concentration and were my essential allies. Luckily, the result was impeccable! !
After the last fire comes the final step of hand polishing, which brings the paints on the teeth to life. For Lecci, this process of running with the canvas of a pocket watch is rewarding for several key reasons.
“The teeth on the back of a pocket watch case offer a completely different surface than the dial of a wristwatch, partly because of their larger diameter but, above all, because of the visual and tactile pleasure provided by the absence of protective glass. Pocket watch, you can practice the engraved and bitten surface without filter. Here, the slightest flaw is visible, and so finding the right strategy to reach this point of perfection, for me, is natural adrenaline! But on the other hand, this free interaction with toothbrushes also allows us to notice the subtleties of their beauty.
That’s an understatement. The L’Armoriale pocket watch is truly a sight to behold. The synergy between the artisans is crystal clear, with each strategy editing the other to create intensity and movement, resulting in a watch that is alive inside and out. Of course, at the center of this watch beats an equally impeccable calibre: a mechanical movement dating back to 1890 and signed by A. Golay Leresche.
These one-of-a-kind art paintings can be purchased and the value is presented upon request by contacting Parmigiani Fleurier directly.
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