MAKING MAGIC

Prestige visits the Van Cleef & Arpels watch manufacture and automaton-maker François Junod's workshop in Switzerland to discover more about the rare, time-honoured crafts and techniques showcased in novelties this year

- STEPHANIE IP

Time at Van Cleef & Arpels runs a little differently from elsewhere. Time is poetry; it tells stories and plays hide and seek. Time can be erratic, romantic, climactic - it's regulated not so much by mechanics as by emotions. Inside Les Ateliers Horlogers de Van Cleef & Arpels, the maison's manufacture in Meyrin, Switzerland, this artistic statement, in the form of an equation, is painted on the walls, stopping us in our tracks during a recent visit.

Later, Rainer Bernard, head of research and development at Van Cleef & Arpels, explains, "The equation is about how you feel time. If you're waiting anxiously for someone at a rendezvous, time might seem endless. If you're in a happy moment, time becomes very short. Time isn't always regulated in the same way a watch might indicate to you. One hour doesn't always feel like one hour - if you're sensitive to time, it can change, it stretches. For some people, time can feel infinite."

The equation encapsulates what time means to Van Cleef & Arpels, which has sought to think about time in a different manner, capturing moments in unique ways that are unheard of in the watchmaking industry.

Bernard points to the Planetarium automaton, a complex astrological device that traces the actual planetary movements in our solar system, and to the tiny emerald and sapphire shooting star that marks out the time in Earth hours. "See here, you have to search the sky a little for that lucky symbol, the shooting star. And you really have to look for it because it's small. That's what we like, to slow down and read the time and to present it in different ways."

Van Cleef & Arpels' unique vision of timekeeping reaches new heights this year as the house continues doing what it does best: marrying its savoir faire in jewellery and watchmaking to produce some of the world's most enchanting jewels that tell time.