On the wrist, the 14mm thick rose gold case is pleasingly chunky on its black alligator strap, a contemporary gothic style statement with substance.
Engraver Dick Steenman is behind the minutely detailed rattlesnake push-piece and Louis Vuitton Monogram flowers tattooed on the skull.Ī sleek finish for the Tambour Curve GMT Flying Tourbillon, with its characteristic convex curved. Yet visually, it is anything but macabre, thanks to 50 hours of meticulously executed enameling by Swiss artist Anita Porchet who has infused both snake and skull with such movement and humor that it is impossible not to smile at the maxim to seize the day.
The aesthetic is of a contemporary Vanitas, the symbolic art representing the transience of life, including the skull as a symbol of the certainty of death, and the hourglass to denote the shortness of life. Meanwhile, one of the skull's eyes opens to reveal the House's signature Monogram flower, and its jaw - complete with one gold tooth - drops to expose the kicker: the words 'Carpe Diem', and a reminder to make every day count. The automata on the Tambour Carpe Diem are different however, telling the time on demand in spectacular style: "we wanted to bring to the jacquemart our vision of the 21st century with all the energy and creativity characteristic of our brand since it began producing watches in 2002," says Michel Navas, master watchmaker at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.Ī touch of the snake push-piece triggers a 16-second tableau that brings the snake on the dial alive, slithering aside to display the hour in the middle of the skull, while the end of its tail, twined around a brilliant-cut diamond, flicks towards the minutes. Historically, jacquemarts or quarter-jacks, were automated figures on clocktowers, very often the bell strikers that rung the hour but on watches, they are frequently decorative rather than functional, featuring alongside the hands used to tell the time. The house has made bespoke jacquemart watches-watches with automata-for private clients before, but this is the first one to emerge publicly from the ateliers of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, and it's a masterpiece of engineering that centers on the symbolic art of the Vanitas. After all, skull rhymes with skoal.But the jewel in the crown of the presentation, was the Tambour Carpe Diem (top), the result of two years of development and 320 hours of painstaking construction, engraving, enameling and gem setting. Now, if it's all the same to y'all, I'm going to go fill a flagon with something intoxicating and hum a bar or two of Gaudeamus Igitur. That is what Horace, whose carpe diem is spoken silently by this watch, actually had in mind. The only thing that matters is that I haven't touched you yet." Now, I don't know that anyone needs a half-million-dollar (more or less) ultra-complicated beast of a watch to remind them that To The Same Fate We All Tend, but the flip side to what they call todesangst in German is a recognition that the reality of death may also give us extra relish for life. He said Death will say to you, "No, it doesn't matter. He writes that his alleged teacher, the Yaqui shaman Don Juan Matus, explained to him that death is always on your left, at arm's length – and that if you are upset about anything, you should turn to it and ask it if it really matters. I don't think anyone reads him anymore, but there's a remark from Carlos Castañeda which has stuck with me over many years. The movement is based on a repeating base originally developed at Fabrique du Temps and which the always astute SJX notes was used by Laurent Ferrier, in the Galet Minute Repeater. It's not entirely clear from the press release, but I'd imagine that there is a separate mainspring for the train that moves the snake around, and certainly, there is one for the minute repeater (minute repeaters and sonneries are always driven by a separate mainspring, which is wound up when you activate the slide or pusher in the case). When you activate the watch, all those moving elements have to work in perfect synchrony – the entire dance of the snake and chiming of the gongs runs exactly sixteen seconds – and they require a lot of energy as well. Purely from an engineering standpoint, it's quite an undertaking. It was created at Louis Vuitton La Fabrique du Temps, a well-known and highly respected complications specialist which Louis Vuitton acquired in 2012. The movement is quite obviously not just something that Louis Vuitton picked up off the shelf.