The beautiful hours of Cartier

Reinvent, transmit, create: those are the vocations of the House of Cartier crafts that gives rise to the watches using ancestral know-how.

There was once an eighteenth century farmhouse lost in the Swiss Jura, in which thirty artisans reviving forgotten know-how ... A beautiful story called "The House of Crafts" written to this by Cartier . Pierre Rainero, Director of Image and Heritage watchmaker jeweler, said: "This house is a translation of a concern we had for over twenty years, reveal the beauty of some trades that had completely disappeared. Today we master them again, we value and we open to new applications and miniaturized to the dials of our watches Crafts. "

The House of Crafts has found refuge in the Jura farmhouse.© DR

Three large families of trades exist within this house: jewelry, the stone setting, work materials, enamel, through the mastery of fire and its artistic dimension, and inlays of flowers, straw, wood ... All selected by a peeling observation center the structures, browsing museums, folk art student ... Among them, three are exclusive to Cartier; the watermark, the gold granulation and enamel granulation. The invention of the watermark is attributed to the Sumerians. The first objects created by this art were dated three thousand years before Christ. A twisted son of lace, rolled, hammered, gold and platinum, which form all kinds of patterns after countless microwelds. Thousands of gestures follow each other during at least one month for the realization of a single dial.

The jeweler's enamel and share their know-how to create a new art craft

Granulation also appeared in the third millennium before Christ, but it is the eighth century BCE it finds its strength with Etruscan art. Consisting of gold seeds seedlings on a plate to create a relief pattern, this technique requires four months of work to complete a dial. A craftsman will entrust us during the tour of the house: "It's not that complicated, but it's very long, very delicate." Not surprisingly when we learn he has assembled nearly 4,000 golden balls of 0.2 to 0.95 mm in diameter for the watch face Rotonde, the panther motif ... "for the granulation enamel, gold balls are replaced by balls of E-mail. 

The jeweler's enamel and share their know-how to create here as a new technique, a new art craft, "says Carole us Kasapi, head movements at Cartier creation. Reinventing ancestral gestures do not necessarily mean an outdated design. The proof with these models that show how much Cartier was able to innovate and put forward an aesthetic dimension to each presentation unique dials, in three dimensions. living pictures, extraordinary expression courses tailored to the exercise of special orders made entirely by the same craftsman ... In terms of price, Pierre Rainero is vague: "At the height of the difficulty that must be overcome" ...