The result of Cartier’s work on shapes, this watch combines savoir-faire from Cartier watchmakers and jewellers alike. It all starts with the open bracelet’s unprecedented generous architecture, which blends openwork and polished reflective gold with elongated lines and defined edges.
Tension culminates as a delicate dial meets its reflection, where time appears to move backwards. The gem-like bevelled glass on the dial marks the piece’s double identity, equal in sophistication and precision.
This creation that pushes boundaries is available in several versions: yellow and rose gold, one in diamond-set white gold and two in white gold paved with coloured stones. The complementary duality combines fullness and emptiness, angularity and curvature.
In white gold, the watch explores material through its paving combinations. Snow setting and inverted setting combine to create both tactile and visual appeal. Jeanne Toussaint had a particular preference for this inverted setting due to its sensuality and originality.
Daring to go beyond the limits of High Jewellery, the stones create a vibrant chromatic harmony and reveal a further sensuality. This is where all of Cartier’s art is found, in its capacity to evoke colour, light and senses to be able to better question the mystery of time.
This vision has inspired Cartier to make two new creations. The first celebrates Louis Cartier’s peacock motif, with its blue and green chromatic harmony, consisting principally of chrysoprases, obsidian, emeralds, Paraiba tourmalines and an iridescent blue-green lacquer wrapped around chiselled gold.
The second introduces a new chromatic harmony around an opal, amethysts, spessartite garnets and tiger’s eye inserts.
The result is felt in the richness of the textures, subtle to the touch. It’s all about contrasts: the originality of the reverse setting, the graininess of the paving, the smoothness of the lacquered elements and the openwork. Like a rhythm, a texture is to be discovered with the hands and the eyes.
“Reflection is a veritable sculpture to wear on the wrist – like a skeletonised chain-link that must be ‘broken’ to discover the time. Disruption is woven throughout: different sections interrupt the visual rhythm and flow, and a variety of angles and faces break up its roundness. It tempts disorientation by playing with reflections, playing with architecture, and continuing to defy categorisation: neither a watch nor a jewel but an entirely new kind of Cartier creation.”
Marie-Laure Cérède – Cartier’s Jewellery and Watchmaking Creative Director
