A few weeks ahead of the SIAR 2020 and right on time for the Mexican holiday of the ‘Día de Los Muertos"‘ —Day of the Dead—, De Bethune presents the DW5 Cempasúchil unique piece. This one-off creation for the Maestri’art Collection sings the joy of an enduring celebration. This new watch is the outcome of a three-way dialogue and a conversation that spans two eras, between two exceptional art engravers. The first is José Guadalupe Posada, the legendary Mexican engraver and chisel virtuoso who made the dead dance at the end of the 19th century. His work is interpreted with the contemporary talent of Swiss Art engraver Michèle Rothen, working in close concert with Denis Flageollet, master watchmaker and founder of De Bethune.
With this incredible timepiece, De Bethune celebrates the Day of the Dead. Between life and death, tequila shots and religious syncretism where practices and beliefs happily merge on a day that has become part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Welcome to Mexico, where cemeteries are transformed into dance floors, tombs into tabletops, altars into sumptuous buffets, all blanketed with delicate blossoms of the Cempasúchil —the marigold also called La Flor de Los Muertos a.k.a flower of the dead— under the benevolent gaze of La Catrina. With rivers of orange petals from the bouquets of Cempasúchil blossoms that line alleys and bathe them in the intense scent of marigolds, guiding the spirits of the deceased on their journey home the new De Bethune DW5 Cempasuchil is a tribute to the towering work of Posada.
While there are many watches on the subject of skulls and the Day of the Dead, none of them has gotten its inspiration from the engravings of Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada.
The engraver of Calaveras —‘skulls’ in Spanish— offers images of skeletons more alive than the living. The chisel virtuoso has turned the macabre upside down, merging it with the singular way Mexicans celebrate their dead with happiness and joy. At the heart of his creations, the queens of the festival, the Calaveras are everywhere. Smiling skulls, hilarious skeletons coquettishly prancing about in top hats and boaters, Posada’s distinctive eye and hand capture imagery that overflows with life. With more than 15,000 cataloged engravings, his legacy remains immense.
Under the pencil stroke of Denis Flageollet and Michèle Rothen, the delta-shaped case in colored titanium with 18K gold inserts of the DW5 Cempasúchil provides a unique spectacle. While Posada etched his Calaveras on flat zinc plates, Denis Flageollet and Michèle Rothen miniaturize them to the extreme, only to give them more relief and volume. On the outside of the timepiece, the watchmaker gives us the phantasmagorical world inspired by the discovery, on a trip across the Atlantic, of an old engraving that depicted a joyful rendering by Posada.
According to beliefs, the petals of the Cempasúchil flower —marigold— retain the warmth of the sun and embody the divine. The name stems from the Nahuatl —language of the ancient Aztec civilization— word Cempohualxochitl, meaning ‘twenty flowers’ and which Aztecs used it for decoration at burials. The eternal love of Xochitl, materialized by this flower, could heal diseases because it was believed they come from sadness or fear, and true love can heal all.
The DW5 Cempasúchil transforms know-how into emotion and technique into pure beauty. For De Bethune, the approach applies just as well to art as it does to watchmaking. The DW5 Cempasúchil belongs to both worlds. It speaks of joy as genuinely as it does of precision and complications. The alliance of blued titanium and gold, a new technology for combining the two metals reaching beyond the challenge of a contemporary reinterpretation of the Mexican artist's engravings, Denis Flageollet and Michèle Rothen introduce the additional technical challenges of not only working with a titanium case, but also of having it flame-blued, hand-engraved, and decorated for the first time with delicate gold inserts, as well as engraved to magnify the Cempasúchil blossoms.
And to take the level of difficulty a few notches higher still, several different types of 18K gold alloy are used. Playing on nuances to accentuate the edginess of the famous portrait of La Catrina by Posada. White gold, yellow gold, rose gold, green gold —an 18K gold combined with a smidgeon of silver—, and a new ‘marbled’ gold —a blend of white gold, rose gold, and yellow gold—: Denis Flageollet’s unrivaled know-how is given free rein at De Bethune’s own foundry in Sainte Croix, enabling him to create new shades of the precious metal to underline the piece’s floral elements. Thanks to a new technique developed in his workshop, the metals seem to naturally harmonize and join together. Powered by the manual wound calibre DB2144V2 with spherical moon phase indication, this movement provides a power reserve of 5 days when fully wound.
Sticker Price CHF 275,000 Swiss Francs —approximately $300,000 USD. For more info on De Bethune click here.
