15 October

The day in brief

In Hong Kong, Jaeger-LeCoultre has opened the first exhibition of its The Collectibles programme, with ten restored vintage watches for sale — among them a 1949 Triple Calendar with its days and months written in Portuguese.

Jaquet Droz makes its debut at TimeForArt, the charity auction that Phillips holds in New York on 5 December, with a unique enamel piece designed by a student of the Académie de Meuron.

Among the new releases, Minerva brings an agate cameo to the skeletonised Exo Tourbillon, Czapek dresses the Antarctique Tourbillon in green and yellow gold, MING and Massena LAB set the dial in motion, and Mido certifies the Multifort TV Big Date as a chronometer.

Jaeger-LeCoultre takes the first exhibition of The Collectibles to Hong Kong

Jaeger-LeCoultre has presented the seventh capsule of The Collectibles, the programme through which the Vallée de Joux manufacture sources, restores and resells vintage watches of its own making. For the first time, the presentation takes the form of an exhibition: it is open until 19 October on the first floor of Chater House, in Hong Kong's Central district, with free admission.

The exhibition brings together 16 pieces — eight mid-20th-century models and eight contemporary interpretations of the same designs — arranged around four themes: Duoplan, Reverso, Memovox and Precision. There are live restoration demonstrations, with hand blueing of hands and pivot polishing, and two talks with the brand's product and heritage team.

The ten watches in the capsule have been on sale since 13 October, each accompanied by an extract from the manufacture's archives. They include a 1955 Duoplan Chain, a 1949 Duoplan Tubogas with a hidden dial, a 1931 steel Reverso Cordonnet with a Tavannes calibre, the Reverso Platinum Number 1 from 2001 and Number 2 from 2003, the latter with a tourbillon, a 1958 Futurematic E502 and a Memovox Parking from the same year, whose alarm can be set between 30 and 120 minutes ahead.

For Portuguese readers, the most intriguing piece is the 1949 Triple Calendar: a pink gold case with teardrop lugs and day and month discs in Portuguese, made for Portuguese-speaking clients.

The exhibition is also the setting for the world premiere of the Calibre 101 Chain, a pink gold bangle set with 158 brilliant-cut diamonds and 36 bands of black Hyceram, a polished ceramic composite, around a small black lacquered dial. At its centre is the Calibre 101, which the brand describes as the world's smallest rectangular manual-winding mechanical movement: 14 mm long, 4.8 mm wide and 3.4 mm thick, weighing about one gram.

The calibre's dimensions and architecture have not changed since 1929. As in the Duoplan, its components are split across two levels — the escapement on one, the barrel and gear train on the other — which makes room for a proportionally larger balance in such a narrow movement. The current version, the fifth generation, has 98 components, beats at 21,600 vibrations per hour (3 Hz) and offers a 33-hour power reserve. Each calibre takes 40 hours to assemble, and production is limited to a few dozen pieces a year.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Jaquet Droz creates a unique enamel piece for TimeForArt

Jaquet Droz is taking part in TimeForArt for the first time, the charity auction held every two years in New York. The brand is contributing a unique piece, the Petite Heure Minute Les Volumes du Temps, which goes under the hammer on 5 December at Phillips' The New York Watch Auction XV, with an estimate of CHF 100,000 to 150,000. The proceeds go to the Swiss Institute, a Swiss contemporary art centre based in New York, in support of young artists.

The dial was designed by Fiona Djukanovic, a student at the Académie de Meuron, the Neuchâtel visual arts school that the brand has supported for about two years. The composition is geometric: a large X crosses the dial, the minutes sit at the top and the hours at the bottom, and the enamel forms sloping volumes that could only be polished by hand.

The technique combines three traditions. Grand feu enamel is fired at high temperature; in champlevé, the metal is hollowed out and the cavities filled with enamel; in flinqué, a translucent enamel covers a hand engraving that remains visible beneath it. Two raised triangular plates carry a sunray engraving, and 40 small blocks laid out like tiles are polished flush after firing.

The 18-carat white gold case measures 41 mm in diameter and 13.78 mm in height. The automatic calibre JD2653.SI, with a module inherited from the Ophidian Hour for the disc display, beats at 4 Hz and has a 68-hour power reserve.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Minerva carves an agate cameo into the skeletonised Exo Tourbillon

Minerva has presented the Exo Tourbillon Skeleton Limited Edition 18, a series of 18 pieces with an 18-carat pink gold case measuring 44.8 mm in diameter. The number recalls 1858, the year the Villeret manufacture was founded, and appears in Roman numerals — XVIII — on a plate at 4 o'clock.

The dial is a two-part cameo. The base is blue agate, polished and cut out; on top, a white agate disc is recessed and textured by laser, hand-engraved and finished by a miniature painter until it reveals the profile of the goddess Minerva, inspired by the house's early advertising. It is also the first time an Exo Tourbillon has received the fluted bezel, a Minerva signature since 1927.

The hand-wound calibre M18.69, with 188 components, is an evolution of the Exo Tourbillon introduced in 2010. "Exo" means the balance sits outside the cage, mounted above it. Taking it out of the cage allows the cage and the rotating escapement to be smaller, while the balance gains diameter, mass and 18 regulating screws — more inertia and finer adjustment, two factors that favour precision. The price of this solution lies in the assembly: the balance staff requires tolerances of 5 microns (0.005 mm), an adjustment made by hand in Villeret, and the assembly is held by a single-arm balance bridge.

Skeletonisation reduces the movement to a few lines, with more than 400 inner angles bevelled and polished by hand (anglage). The structure around the tourbillon, coated in pink gold, carries a Roman frieze, and the name Minerva is engraved and filled with blue lacquer at the top of the cage. The Persian blue alligator strap closes with a pink gold folding clasp.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Czapek dresses the Antarctique Tourbillon in green and yellow gold

Czapek unveiled the Antarctique Tourbillon Victory Green on 14 October, a numbered series of ten pieces born from a private commission. The 18-carat 2N yellow gold case measures 40.5 mm in diameter and 11.5 mm in height, has box sapphire crystals on both sides and extends into an integrated bracelet in the same metal.

The forest green dial uses the Singularité guilloché, a pattern created by Czapek with Metalem on a PVD-treated Secret Alloy base. Calibre 9, the brand's first movement designed, constructed and largely machined in-house, aligns the barrel, the gear train and the flying tourbillon on a single vertical axis, on the dial side. Being a flying tourbillon, it has no upper bridge: the convex titanium cage is fully visible. On the back, the oscillating weight is in hand-engraved 5N gold.

The announced price is CHF 98,000, excluding VAT, on the gold bracelet. The watch is being shown to collectors at WatchTime New York, from 16 to 18 October.

Find out more on the brand's website.

MING and Massena LAB set the dial in motion

MING and Massena LAB have presented the LAB 57.09 Secret Honey, limited to 125 pieces, at CHF 7,250 before taxes. Orders open today, 15 October, at 1 pm GMT (2 pm in Lisbon), exclusively on MING's website.

Above a dark brown lacquered dial, three stacked sapphire discs rotate, each with its own colour and pattern of openings, completing one turn in 24 hours, 12 hours and 60 minutes. As the openings overlap, the pattern changes continuously — the effect the brand calls dynamic guilloché, although it is an optical effect rather than an engraved surface. The honey-coloured hours and minutes sit on the 12-hour and 60-minute discs, so the colour only reveals itself as they move.

The automatic calibre MING 330.M2, based on a Sellita, beats at 4 Hz and has a power reserve of about 50 hours. It shares the architecture of the SW330 GMT, which explains the presence of a 24-hour disc. The grade 5 titanium case measures 40 mm in diameter and 10.17 mm in thickness, is water-resistant to 100 m, and its stepped lugs combine three tones: natural titanium, TiN, with a yellow gold look, and TiSiN, with a rose gold look.

Find out more on the brand's website.

Mido certifies the Multifort TV Big Date as a chronometer

Mido has added COSC chronometer certification to the Multifort TV Big Date. The new reference M049.567.11.041.00 keeps the television-shaped steel case, measuring 39.2 by 40 mm and water-resistant to 100 m, and the blue sunray dial with a chequered pattern and big date.

The movement is the Calibre 80, based on the ETA C07.651, beating at 21,600 vibrations per hour with an 80-hour power reserve. The 3 Hz frequency, lower than the usual 4 Hz, uses less energy and helps extend the reserve. The Nivachron hairspring, a titanium-based alloy with low sensitivity to magnetic fields and temperature variations, helps meet the criteria of the COSC, which tests each movement over 15 days, in five positions and at three temperatures. The announced US price is $1,650.

Find out more on the brand's website.

What deserves attention

The Collectibles shows how the major manufactures have come to treat their own heritage as a business: sourcing, restoring, documenting with archive extracts and reselling old pieces with the house's guarantee. The move to an exhibition format, with live restoration, brings the programme closer to a travelling museum, and the choice of Hong Kong points to Asian collectors.

New York takes centre stage in the coming days: WatchTime New York and Windup both run from 16 to 18 October, and Czapek is taking the new Antarctique there. In December, the city hosts TimeForArt. It will be worth watching whether unique pieces created with art schools, such as Jaquet Droz's, become a regular format at these auctions.