Talking Van Cleef & Arpels with Rainer Bernard

We are also very proud of the new Extraordinary Dials, narrating the love story of Vega and Altair. First, there is the meeting and the blooming of their love, with Lady Rencontre Céleste, in a medley of blue, because they meet on earth at night. After being separated by the Goddess of Heaven, who drew the Milky Way between them, the lovers meet again with the help of a celestial bridge created by birds, in the Lady Retrouvailles Célestes, in a universe built out of 13 layers, in glittering tones of pink and mauve. These creations highlight the métiers d’art mastered internally by the Maison and especially the setting in enamel technique, which involves setting precious stones, here diamonds, directly in plique-à-jour enamel. We wanted to represent sparkling clouds, and this technique generates the feeling we were looking for: weightlessness and accentuation of the glow of the precious stones. It was a real dialogue between science and art, with two years of research and development to create this technique, now patented by the Maison.  

Van Cleef & Arpels is known for its poetic approach to time. How do you translate this philosophy into technical development within your watchmaking processes?

For our narrative creations such as the Poetic Complications or the Extraordinary Objects, we start by creating an idea within the fields of imagination, such as Poetic Astronolgy, love stories or Enchanted Nature. Then we transform this idea into a story: we develop it like a film and create a script. In the next step, we translate its narrative structure into a possible sequence of movements and then convert these elements into technical functions which are highly dependent on each other. At the same time, the characters, the scenery, the costumes are defined and expressed by the different métiers of our own craftsmanship. All this, as you can imagine, is a highly iterative process which ends only when we are perfectly satisfied with the narration.

Your creations often combine mechanical complexity with artistic storytelling. How does the R&D department collaborate with design and métiers d’art teams to achieve this balance?

At Van Cleef & Arpels, every creation starts with a story, whether it is butterflies wandering around in a garden, or two lovers meeting on a bridge for a tender kiss. At the beginning, it is just an idea in our heads, nothing more, all the development must be done. The different métiers are then working together: from the Creative Studio, jewelry and high jewelry craftsmen, Métiers d’Art team to the watchmakers and technical designers. We work closely to combine all our crafts and knowledge to bring to life the story: we complement each other. For technical solutions, we naturally favorize clever solutions over complex ones, which means that we are not seeking complexity for its own sake. We may bring to life various and multilayered stories with several “actors” moving in various ways, which at the same time indicate the time, combined with automatons on passage et on demand, always moving smoothly with a poetic speed: all the engineering required is driven only by the story.

This part is combined with craftsmanship, at the heart of every initiative of the Maison for more than a century. In watchmaking, we continue this tradition with a wide range of in-house expertise. Our creations feature miniature painting, gem-setting, engraving, marquetry and over 15 different enameling techniques and other techniques. Choosing a specific métier d’art or their combination is a central element of the creative process, especially for Extraordinary Dials or Poetic Complications collections. Starting always with a story and an esthetic in mind, we will choose the techniques which allow us to express what we want to tell. Like letters forming words, these craftsmanship form words which then become a poem. To create, for example, effects with light like reflection and brilliance, or visual depth, we carefully choose the perfect materials, textures, forms, colors, sometimes transparency.

The right combination of all the elements then allows us to create, for example, a scenery inducing the feeling of an early summer morning or another specific time of the day. Indeed, the need to develop innovative techniques is always a result of our imagination, willing to express the story: when we realize that the mastered technique in the Maison do not offer the possibility (yet) to create that specific aspect we are looking for, we start to search for the impossible…most of the time till we find a solution. It takes years sometimes.

Which are the biggest technical challenges behind developing such complicated movements and watches that display time in unconventional way?

After we find the story we wish to tell, we have to realize it. This is the biggest challenge: transforming the idea into something real. The Creative Studio starts with the sketches, and all the different teams are thinking together, from the jewelry and high jewelry craftsmen, Métiers d’Art team to the watchmakers and technical designers. Each idea is dependent on the next: if you want something in that part of the dial, that has an influence on the movement, but also on the dial and the craftsmanship. Through these discussions, we clarify where we want to go and then we make sure that technically, we can do it. Each step gets more and more precise, but that is also why it takes us so long to develop our creations. In the case we face a technical challenge, we are searching together for a solution; sometimes the solution comes by changing for example the material of a flower or we change the functional parts of the movement to be able to carry more weight, sometimes we do both. In the end, it is the story which will tell us how to decide…

• A Legendary Watchmaker: François-Paul Journe
• A Racing Machine on the Wrist: Richard Mille
• Manuel Emch: “Watches are Keepers of Memories”