Always ahead of
the competition, Cartier just unveiled their first SIHH (Salon
International de la Haute Horlogerie) creation for 2015: the Ronde Louis
Cartier Filigree watch.
Back in 2013,
the Maison already brought back to life a millennia-old artistic
craft, called granulation. Created in the new Maison
des Métiers d’Art on site at La Chaux-de-Fonds, the Ronde Louis Cartier
Filigree watch reinvents another centuries-old technique, the
filigree, using a figurative, precious approach.
The ancient art
of filigree appeared in Egypt in earliest antiquity. Its invention is
attributed to the Sumerians in around 3000 B.C. before being developed in
India, Tibet, Greece and Iran and much later in Portugal where it reached a new
level of excellence.
As diaphanous
as lace, filigree is a technique of goldsmithing that uses gold or silver wires
soldered together in order to create an openwork grid with a desired motif.
Over a month of
work was required to create this lacework watch that is home to a pair of
panthers whose black-lacquer-spotted coats are literally woven from fine
filigree elements of gold and platinum set with diamonds.
This exceptional work of art brings together numerous kinds of
craftsmanship, from gemstone-setting to goldsmithing, from jewelery-making to
watchmaking, from engraving to lacquering. A thousand actions that give
Cartier’s emblematic animal a rare preciousness with a balance, grace and
absolute refinement that are as ethereal as the finest lace.