WHL[VC Moderator]
4922
Art and Complication - A look at the Tribute to the Great Explorers
May 30, 2011,19:30 PM
It could almost go without saying (since I’ve said it so often!) that Vacheron Constantin makes some of the finest dress watches today. Vacheron Constantin also creates a number of watches with innocative and interesting complications. In the Metiers d’Art collection Vacheron Constantin bring an artistic approach to watchmaking. With the Tribute to the Great Explorers set of watches VC combines an interesting complication with an artisitc dial to create a masterpiece of haute horlogerie.
The PrecedentThe spiritual predecessor to the Tribute to the Great Explorer watches is the Mercator. Introduced in 1994 upon the 400th anniversary of the death of cartographer Gerardus Mercator, the inventor of the “Mercator Projection” map, these watches feature a pair of retrograding hands representing dividers that measure distances on a map.
The hour hand jumps instantaneously one hour with the flyback of the minute hand, and both hands snap back instantaneously at one o’clock.
Vacheron Constantin used its venerable ultrathin automatic caliber 1120 as the base movement upon which it added the retrograding time display
The artistic dials, created by artisans Jean and Lucie Genbrugge, are based on histoic maps that employ Mercator’s innovations. The initial run was concieved to have enamel dials, 38 watches with the eastern hemispher and 12 of the western hemisphere. Other limited edition series champlevé enamel dials were created for specific markets: Japan, Germany, France, Hong Kong, China, Portugal, and North America.
Regular production Mercator watches had either a white or yellow gold dial that was etched and then enamel filled.
In the decade that the Mercator watch was in production, only 638 were ever produced.
Tribute to the Great ExplorersIn 2004 Vacheron Constantin retired the Mercator from production. For those who liked alternative time displays partnered with artistically conceived dials, all was not lost, for the Tribute to the Great Explorer line was introduced. Again using dial makers Jean and Lucie Genbrugge to craft the champleve enamel dials, this time on two levels, Vacheron Constantin brought a wandering hour time display to the watch. The hour glides across a 120 degree arc like a ship sailing over the seas. The minutes are inscribed on the lower enamel dial.
The Tribute to the Great Explorers watches were concieved to be limited to 60 watches for each of four legendary explorers. All cases are in 18K yellow gold and are 40 mm in diameter, up from the 36 mm of the Mercator.
The first two explorers honored were Ferdinand Magellen, who lead the first circumnavigation of the globe:
And Zheng He, a Chinese explorer, who projected Chinese power into the Indian Ocean in the early 15th Century:
In 2008 ,the second pair of explorers was introduced. Marco Polo:
And Christopher Columbus, which I have had the pleasure of seeing in person:
The movement in these watches is Vacheron Constantin’s caliber 1126 AT. The JLC ebauche powers the in-house developed wandering hour display.
Both the Mercator and the Tribute to the Great Explorers show Vacheron Constantin at its best, partnering horological complication with an attractive, artistic display that no other watchmaker can match.
Bill