In Essence

In Singapore last November for Vacheron Constantin's exhibition The Anatomy of Beauty at the ArtScience Museum, CHRISTIAN SELMONI, the maison's style and heritage director, sheds light on its most noteworthy pieces over the decades.

- ALLYSON KLASS

As Vacheron Constantin is the oldest watchmaker with the longest continuous history, which decades are the most important from a creative aspect?

Christian Selmoni (CS): That's a tough question as the manufacture is 267 years old, but we made some stunning developments in the 1820s, on both technical and hand-crafts fronts. I must talk about a grand sonnerie striking watch from 1827 that's in our private collection. It's almost 200 years old, but the grand sonnerie today is still one of the most complicated to produce and at the pinnacle of watchmaking. And this was a ladies' watch... We might think that women today are only getting more interested in high-complication watches, but if you look back at our history, we've had female clients requesting for them.

The first two decades of the 20th century saw the creation of most of the watch shapes we know today - the barrel, cushion, square, rectangular, lozenge and so on. Vacheron Constantin was highly creative during this period. In the Art Deco era, the maison made phenomenal timepieces like brooches, pendant-style, wristwatches and clocks. Europe was also discovering the other cultures of Egypt, China and Japan then, so many of these watches were very much influenced by Asian style.