Happenstance Blue: Anthony Eglin and Chopard's Precious Couture

Baselworld 2016 ended on Thursday, March 24th, the same day I finished Anthony Eglin's mystery, The Blue Rose (Minotaur Books, 2005).

In one of my previous posts, Botanical Companions: J.G. Ballard and Chaumet,  as is the case in this one, an author and a watchmaker, i.e. Eglin and  Chopard are connected by my old friend happenstance. The color blue is the bridge between the Eglin's novel and Chopard's Precious Couture wristwatch.
 

Chopard Precious Couture  Model 1044271004

 

Coincidentally, Isabelle Guignet wrote in her Swiss Watch Authority WorldTempus post  on March 24th,  "Blue is the colour — Cool blue is the hottest colour for this year’s Baselworld ... in every shade from cerulean to royal blue." 



So let's explore Eglin's haute horticulture work and Maison Chopard's haute joaillerie creation. In doing so literature can enliven horological artistry.

In the Blue Rose, the main character is the book's namesake, a blue rose bush.
Rosarians know that in nature, this is an unnatural bloom. Roses do not produce  delphinidin, the blue colored pigment needed to produce this wonder. Throughout garden history, such a colored rose is a beautiful genetic aberration  with discordant qualities of both attraction and lethality.

The presumptive owners of the mysterious hybrid are an English couple, Kate and Alex Sheppard who discover the flowering rarity when they purchase an English country home and its overgrown garden. The rose and rights to its hybridization will be worth millions to the international rose industry. In an effort to hide the rose's existence until it can be strategically marketed, Alex and Kate use the code name, "Sapphire" instead of referring to it by its color.  

Additional characters, like blooms and thorns, spring from the flower's find: a retired Edinburgh botanist, scheming buyers, lawyers, nursery owners, cryptographers, police inspectors, and murderers. All are critical to the narrative.
 
Chopard's Precious Couture wristwatch, making its debut at Baselworld 2016 reflects the Blue Rose in one very special, overwhelming way -- its pulsating sapphire adornment radiating in profusion from its central corolla.

In all its grandeur, the watch is 18 ct. white gold with 25 cts. of pear-shaped sapphires; 7.5 cts. of pastel blue sapphires, and marquise-cut sapphires and brilliant cut diamonds.  

It's akin to the distinctive singularity of Eglin's Blue Rose. A bracelet and time dial adorned by natural precious gemstones elements, conceived by designers and brought to market by the creativity of an entire atelier of fine craftsman,

It's a wondrous showstopper, at home in the international trade of  rarefied, luxury time. It can be owned but not ultimately possessed for posterity -- just as a blue rose would be.

Related posts:

Dials Too Can Get the Blues

 March 2016 Bench #3 -- Anthony Eglin




     

  

Discovering Timeless Beauty Unexpectedly: RSW and its Ladyland Line

Although my last blog dealt with the “Advertising Majors” of the US watch industry, one of my blogging joys is to discover a small, previously unknown (to me) watchmaker that produces beautifully designed pieces that incorporate elements from nature in unusual new forms.

Today, I discovered RSW, headquartered in La Neuveville, Switzerland. The 

company is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.  So this posting is also a tribute to its history.

The particular RSW watch collection that caught my eye and prompted my further exploration is the Ladyland line which is “inspired by the form of an asymmetrical seashell.”  I first saw the Ladyland on WorldTempus (July 25, 2014) featuring models with noir (black) and marron (chocolate) dials. But it is the sensuous curve of the timepiece’s casework that was visually hypnotic and reminiscent of the shape of shells, both whole and tide-broken that I remember finding on California beaches.

Ladyland, Noir and Marron Dials

My attraction to the design exemplifies RSW’s philosophy as a “contemporary firm, clearly positioned on the path of watchmaking of the future, offering users timepieces with a distinctive identity that leave nobody indifferent.”  And how can anyone be indifferent to curvaceous lines that evoke the sea's tidal waves  and the way they shape and fragment its creatures?

Earlier this year, RSW unveiled a Ladyland design in stainless steel with a white dial at Baselworld.  All of the models in the line have quartz movements with hour and minute functions.

 

Ladyland, Stainless Steel, White

The company’s history is a tribute to progressive generational involvement and dedication.  Beginning as a small family watch shop in Damascus, Syria, it relocated to Bienne, Switzerland in 1914 as Rama Watch by M. A. Marachly. It became a second-generation family business when Rafik Marachly joined his father in 1946. He subsequently took over the workshop in 1950 modernizing it to reflect worldwide industrial changes in the watch industry.  In 1998, Rama Watch SA officially established the RSW brand, short for Rama Swiss Watch. Four years later in 2002, RSW moved to La Neuveville in the canton of Bern.  There it continued its family tradition of quality watch making but also diversified into pens, leather goods and other luxury items. In 2008, RSW showcased its first tourbillon timepiece thereby gaining recognition as a fine watch maker. The business remains in family hands with M.A. Marachly’s grandchildren holding key corporate director positions. It has a worldwide network of distributors.

RSW is definitely a watchmaker to follow and I’ll be doing so with pleasure.  Let me know what watch makers you’ve discovered or love to follow, either large or small and share your interests with our growing blog community.    

Botanical Companions: J.G. Ballard and Chaumet

How did J. G. Ballard and Chaumet  become nature’s companions in this latest post?  Like so many things in life, happenstance. The July 10 issue of The New York Review of Books has a very personal, perceptive article on J.G. Ballard the acclaimed dystopian English novelist and short story writer by Zadie Smith. This led me to pick up and re-read one of my favorite Ballard short stories, The Garden of Time.

At the heart of the story are the time flowers growing below the villa terrace of refined aristocrat, Count Axel.  Ballard describes each time flower as being the size of a goblet, the opaque outer petals enclosing the crystal heart.  Their diamond brilliance contained a thousand faces, the crystal seeming to drain the air of its light and motion.  We learn that as Axel carries each picked time flower back onto the terrace, it began to sparkle and deliquesce, the light trapped within the core at last released.  For Ballard, the power of the time flowers, be they just buds or fully grown is that although they can't stop human time, depending on their maturity when picked, they can drug the events that are happening at that time into a trance. Time momentarily or slightly longer reverses allowing more time for Alex and his wife to enjoy the beauty of the life they have created. In this vein, we remember his statement to his wife: I picked a perfect flower, my dear, a jewel.

Enter my timely happenstance.  In June 2014, I read one of Nazanin Lankarani’s posts on WorldTempus. In it she interviews Thierry Fritsch, Chaumet’s chief executive about the company's 2013 selection of the hydrangea as its floral muse for its new Hortensia haute joaillerie /time piece collection.  Ms. Lankarani quotes Mr. Fritsch as saying “Haute joaillerie, like haute couture, is a laboratory of style. We have already created 24 pieces in the Hortensia Haute Joaillerie collection and will continue to explore this flower’s possibilities.”  

After seeing one of the  images of  the limited edition Hortensia tourbillon time piece, I could not forget it. I wanted to use it in the context of an upcoming post. But how? Zadie Smith’s article on Ballard coupled with my subsequent re-reading of his The Garden of Time gave me that opportunity.

I find Chaumet’s Hortensia watches to be the perfect embodiment of Ballard’s time flowers and their time-arresting power Count Axel was so privileged to have in his garden. What is also intriguing  about this particular edition is that it is limited to 12 pieces.  Towards the end of Ballard's story, Axel is left with a mere dozen flowers, of which his sequential selection will mark the final, unarrested return to time's forward movement.

Chaumet's Hortensia Tourbillon

"Dial composed by applied hydrangea flowers: sculpted and hand-engraved then Grand Feu enameled with silver foils on the center, in blue & purple tones."

Time will tell if Chaumet’s choice of the hortensia will continue to be Ballard’s lasting companion as the iconic time flower. 

Recommended Reading:
The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Changed Our Lives by Stephen Buchmann. New York: Scribner, 2015.