At past Watches and Wonders fairs in Geneva, the Van Cleef & Arpels booth has featured a noticeably strong jewelry presence that set it apart from its more traditional watch-brand counterparts. Its lush recreation of an enchanted forest, nodding to both nature and astronomy (two of the brand’s touch points), gave off a sense of time slowing down amid the bustle of the show.
Even so, refined and complicated horology was still on display, including the Naissance de l’Amour automaton last year that featured a gold-sculpted cupid emerging from a feather basket intricately crafted in lacquer, and the latest version of the brand’s Pont des Amoureux watch, featuring a retrograde time display depicting two lovers on a bridge in Paris.
The vision behind such wonders, and their rich storytelling through precious materials and mechanical invention, is Rainer Bernard, head of research and development for watchmaking at Van Cleef & Arpels.
Speaking by video from Geneva, Mr. Bernard explained how the company approaches watchmaking; what will be new at this year’s fair from Tuesday to Monday; and his love of cuckoo clocks. The interview has been edited and condensed.
You are a mechanical engineer who worked previously with fiber optics and high-powered lasers. Does that inform your work with watches?
Since I was small, I’ve been interested in technique and everything that moves mechanically. I like to use the analogy of language to explain what I do. At university, you learn grammar, but when you start learning certain techniques, you add words that you didn’t know. Then you can create different stories with these new words.
This additional knowledge actually increases your vocabulary, which helps a lot here at Van Cleef. Most of what we do is very new, so this additional vocabulary, this large knowledge of words and grammar, actually helps me to understand the various needs, and ultimately find innovative solutions.
This time you are introducing your Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune and a Midnight Heure d’Ici & Heure d’Ailleurs. How do they sum up your approach to watchmaking?
Our watches invite you to take the time to read the time, to appreciate and capture the instant, because it’s gone in that second. This year’s novelties once more reflect that vision. The Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune is a gold watch accented with mother-of-pearl and aventurine, and combines a moon phase and day/night display with an on-demand animation allowing the wearer to retrieve the current moon phase at any time of the day. We like this watch because it shows the passage of time in this beautiful, slowed rhythm, of the sun going up and the moon going up and down. And we see the on-demand animation as a playful way to dream; a good way to inspire your feelings and creativity and the positive vibrations that come with that.
The Midnight Heure d’Ici & Heure d’Ailleurs [meaning an “hour here and an hour elsewhere”] has a chocolate-brown watch dial and is a different interpretation of the classic travel-time watch. The idea was to have a watch that cleverly indicates the time when traveling, to help people think, “What’s my family doing at this moment?” or “What’s my beloved wife or husband doing?” This is our way to touch feelings with this watch, while not over-complexifying it.
Your watches can take years to develop. The Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune took four years. What is the process?
All our Poetic Complications collection watches have one thing in common: Time is displayed through a story. We spend a long time at the story level. We have this basket of stories, which we fill up with parts of stories and chapters. Then we discuss.
When we all finally agree on a story that touches us, we bring it to life. But often we don’t know how to achieve this technically. We travel toward a destination we don’t know. Also, there’s no competition between technique — the movement, for example — and craftsmanship, which can be anything from enameling and mother-of-pearl to gold sculpting. Neither is the boss of the other and both work together to realize the story.
We spend a long time in this zone, which I call the architectural phase, where we go through many possibilities on how to create the watch. Like an architect who defines how their building should look, we consider the different rooms, the functions to integrate, what métiers d’art to use — and how to create interfaces between them.
At the end, we have technical drawings, down to the detail for each component. At that point everybody knows what to do.
Van Cleef & Arpels timepieces often feature flora and fauna, ballerinas and fairies. Do you differentiate between men and women’s watches?
We try to create stories that are universal and unique, like love stories, which work for men and women. It’s never in our mind to create a watch for somebody; what we have in mind is the story.
What is your earliest horological memory?
My father was a collector of wall clocks, specifically old clocks and cuckoo clocks, which are not the most precise.
They’re quite noisy: Imagine six of them sounding at the same time, but not precisely. I grew up in a house filled with the presence of these beautiful, decorated cuckoo clocks, some of which belonged to my grandfather and which today hang in my office.
I’ve always been fascinated by my father winding them — it was something I could do with him very early on — and it certainly gave me my first love of watches. I still have one of the clocks here, which my father bought 40 years ago, and which gives a rhythm to my day.
Watches are a personal passion and personal love. I like this blending of knowledge, craftsmanship and jewelry, with watchmaking. I’ve really found my dream job.
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