Honoring the talent and expertise of the Les Cabinotiers department, Vacheron Constantin presents four one-of-a-kind timepieces with enameled dials depicting a songbird, beautifully offset by the delicate guilloché pattern adorning the area devoted to time indications. Artistic crafts play a unique role through the enameling work done using the champlevé technique on each of the dials. To give life to the bird motifs, the master artisan has broadened his palette to encompass ten colors and their subtly graded shades.
The ultra-thin 1120 AT movement has been chosen for these four watches since it enables an off-centered display of the time providing broad scope for the master artisan to express his artistry. These four creations depict a Robin, a Blue Tit, a Blue Jay, and a Hummingbird, while the right-hand side is adorned with a finely executed guilloché pattern. This area is dedicated to time indications on a 120-degree sector bearing applied minutes. The satellite hours are thus of the dragging variety, with three hands each carrying a four-digit rotating disk and taking turns along the minute’s scale.
Perfect mastery of volumes and craftsmanship techniques is essential on these models featuring a two-tiered dial. The work on the two dial sections —one enameled and concealing the module driving the hours and minutes, while the other guilloché area serves to display these indications— requires great precision in the fine adjustment of these two elements endowing this model with its innate elegance.
To create these strikingly realistic dials, Vacheron Constantin's master enameller used the champlevé painted enamel technique. This consists of hollowing out of the dial material thin alveoli, designed as receptacles for the enamel delicately applied with a brush. To give life to the birds, the master artisan has in fact extended his palette to some 10 colors and their subtly graded shades for each of the dials, representing the fruit of intense research and extreme dexterity in their application. Mastery of fire is also indispensable, given that enamel – a mineral material —must be melted to achieve its inimitable translucent brilliance. As the birds take shape under the expert hand of the craftsman, the piece requires successive firings in the kiln to gradually fix the colors in place, which is a risky operation for the work already performed.
The right-hand section of the dials, consisting of a sector for displaying the hours and minutes, is finely hand guilloché and then colored to bring out the basket-weave motifs.
All four watches are 40 mm in diameter and 12.37 mm thick. Three of them cased in 18K 5N pink gold and one in 18K white gold. The Vacheron Constantin calibre 1120 AT is an in-house automatic movement composed of 205 parts and 36 jewels, and which delivers a power reserve of 40 hours when fully wound while beating at a frequency of 19,800 vph. These four timepieces are certified with the Poinçon de Genève—Geneva Seal aka as Hallmark of Geneva— and are also one-of-a-kind unique pieces.
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Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Singing Birds ‘Robin’
Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Singing Birds ‘Blue Tit’
Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Singing Birds ‘Blue Jay’
Vacheron Constantin Les Cabinotiers Singing Birds ‘Hummingbird’
