Gaston-Louis Vuitton, the third generation of Louis Vuitton’s founding family, sounds like a fascinating character. Known as “the manufacturer with an inner artist”, he ran the company from 1936 to 1970. A man of diverse interests, he started collecting at an early age, accumulating trunks, travel articles and those evocative hotel stickers that were put on suitcases.
Along with typographical rarities and monograms, Gaston-Louis’s eclectic personal collection evolved to include walking canes, African masks, hand tools and a selection of tsubas (highly decorated Japanese sword guards). These artefacts are key to the Louis Vuitton Escale Cabinet of Wonders, its new trio of limited-edition Escale watches. Combining technical wizardry with a wide range of decorative techniques, they showcase the far-reaching work of the horology team at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.
Handbraided calf leather straps feature on all three watches
Michel Navas, the Louis Vuitton master watchmaker, says of the line-up, “Gaston-Louis Vuitton was fond of Japanese art and the inspiration comes from the animals found on the tsubas.” The task the manufacturers set themselves was highly ambitious. “With Jean [Arnault, the director of watchmaking] we wanted to gather all the masters of savoir-faire,” Navas explains. “Not only the watchmakers but the dial makers, the engravers and enamel experts, to realise these magnificent pieces.”
It took the team 150 hours to create the Koi’s Garden watch. In a meditative scene, two carp swim in a swirling eddy surrounded by coloured pebbles. The detail on each fish, engraved in white gold, is meticulous, showing every scale, fin and whisker. Kiln-firing gives a fine dark oxide layer to the carp, adding to the three-dimensional appearance. After hand-polishing, a miniature painter coats the carp in translucent blue lacquer, making them glisten, while diamond-set pebbles evoke sunlight on water. Gaston-Louis Vuitton’s monogram is found at six o’clock, sculpted from gold and set with onyx.
Snake’s Jungle in white gold, nephrite jade and marquetry, POA, louisvuitton.com
The second timepiece contains a wilder picture of a jungle in which a snake with diamond-patterned skin bares its fangs. Its gaze falls on an orb of gold and nephrite jade forming the monogram. The background bamboo forest is cut and hand-assembled using marquetry techniques, with 14 shades of green and 367 pieces arranged like a tiny jigsaw puzzle. The serpent is created using micro-sculpture, engraving and champlevé enamelling.
Dragon’s Cloud in rose gold, yellow gold, ruby, carnelian and enamel, POA, louisvuitton.com
A mythological dragon completes the trio, clutching a carnelian-set monogram. To depict the habitat of Asian dragons as creatures of water and sky, damascening was used, creating a decorative inlay with metals of contrasting colours. The dragon’s scales are enamelled and its lower half decorated with paillonné, another very delicate process where the enamel contains tiny pieces of gold suspended between translucent enamel layers. Yellow-gold LV monogram flowers embellish the scales against a background of black enamel.
The Escale, with its round case and lugs that reference the metal brackets of Louis Vuitton trunks, makes its debut housing the Cabinet of Wonders collection. “I like very complicated watches, but I also love simple ones with original complications,” Navas says. “That is difficult to achieve. My favourite is the Escale.” The spirit of travel is celebrated in the decoration on the case middles and buckles with a stylised representation of the ocean. The pieces are finished with calf-leather straps, hand-braided using a technique developed for this collection.
Each watch tells the time but also a story through centuries-old crafts. Unusually, perhaps, for a horological highlight with this name — Cabinet of Wonders — there’s no hype here.
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