SOUND AND VISION

Get ready for a great spectacle! Jaeger-LeCoultre masters a long list of major complications and shows its skills in fine watchmaking here in breathtaking style.

In the Master Grande Tradition Grande Complication, fine watchmaking has found an exceptional home and a medium of expression worthy of the mechanical feat achieved by Jaeger-LeCoultre. On a sublime satin blue dial, the watchmakers have set their signature and highlighted their skill. Delicate dauphine-style hour and minute hands move around a representation of the skies of the northern hemisphere, with constellations such as the Great Bear and Cassiopeia. It also displays the 12 constellations of the zodiac. Around this map, a sun turns once every 24 hours. In the process it shows the signs of the zodiac, the months and the days on a circular scale.

At 6 o’clock, an orbital flying tourbillon joins in the spectacle, revolving around the dial anti-clockwise in 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. Why? The mechanism does not show civil time, but sidereal time, a measurement used by astronomers to follow the trajectory of distant stars.

To complete this watchmaking masterpiece, Jaeger-LeCoultre has included a minuter repeater function with “cathedral” chimes and trebuchet hammers in the 527 components of the hand-decorated manual-winding movement. This complication can ring on the hour, quarters of an hour and every minute as wished. Precious materials combined with a refined execution result in a crystal sound of great purity. This exceptional calibre is set in a delicate 45mm-wide rose-gold case, giving the notes room to flourish.

Price: €359,000 www.jaeger-lecoultre.com

By Dan Diaconu