Horological Meandering

Van Cleef & Arpels perfected the jewellery watch. Whereas Abram Louis Breguet invented everything that is serious about watch making, VC&A took those skills to create magic.

This is the Heures Florales, a watch that tells the hour by the number of flowers blooming on the dial, along with a lateral minute display along the edge of the case. Let’s be clear: this is a piece of art that could tell time more easily if it wanted to, but that is not the point of it. Rather, the point is magic, and no magician reveals his technique. I have reached out to Van Cleef & Arpels several times, and scoured the internet, but very little information is offered regarding the underyling horology. 

Reading Van Cleef's website feels like the text at a Big Name gallery where all the work has already been sold or reserved, and very little effort is made to bring the riff-raff into the need-to-know fold.

“Drawing inspiration from flora and fauna, Van Cleef & Arpels' creations celebrate the spectacle of a benevolent nature constantly renewed. In the Maison’s collections, time flows by in harmony with the endless cycle of the seasons.

Inspired by Linnaeus’ Flower Clock, the Lady Arpels Heures Florale watches give a new dimension to Enchanting Nature, a theme dear to the Maison, by offering a poetic way of telling time. These timepieces reinterpret the Flower Clock, where time is told by counting the number of opened flowers. This animation shows a nature in movement, inspired by the cycle of flowers opening and closing depending on the time of the day.”

Every hour another flour opens, while on the side of the case is a rattrapante hour display.

I wrote a lot about Carl Linnaeus on my website, and a much more extensive version of this post, it’s worth a read.

The Heures Florales is breathtakingly beautiful. When you have this watch on the wrist it becomes clear that every petal is a precious stone or enamelled surface. The little mechanisms that open the blossom as the hour approaches could well be a prototype of creation itself, like a beta-version The Creator showed to investors before launching the Garden of Eden. “Like this, but imagine it smelling great too!”

It’s not my watch, but it is part of the family collection. Honestly if the strap was a little longer I’d be tempted to borrow this for a party. I love it. 

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