Van Cleef & Arpels' Heures Florales watches

Van Cleef & Arpels' Heures Florales watches bring a botanist's dream to life, with serious mechanical prowess.

- Paige Reddinger

One of 60 petals being applied to the dial of the Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier.

BLENDING HIGH-LEVEL technical expertise with a poetic rendering of timekeeping, Van Cleef & Arpels is known for creating theatres for the wrist. Lovers meeting for a kiss on a bridge, dancing ballerinas and orbiting planets have been utilised to mark time at the French maison. But its latest, the 38mm Lady Arpels Heures Florales and Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier (prices upon request), stage a horological first with its most complicated dials to date.

The watches show the passing of time via the opening and closing of flowers. Instead of operating around the circumference of the dial, they bloom in a seemingly random pattern in a series of three different cycles. The hours are counted by the number of flowers that unfurl at each hour, while the minutes are read on a horizontal rotating disc, viewed via an opening on the side of the case.

It may look like a simple performance, but the complex movement involved about five years of research and development. A system, which is , currently pending a patent, sets the flowers in motion via a wheel that charges a spring in the barrel that feeds the power to trigger the animation. The barrel uses a centrifugal regulator that controls the speed of the flowers' movement. They are slow to close and quick to pop open - a cycle that takes up to four seconds.