A time machine retains as much power as an aircraft – elevating a man’s spirit as well as… well, the man himself
In many ways, aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont and jewellery and watch scion Louis Cartier were a perfect match. Both were fascinated by aircraft – Santos-Dumont flew them, Cartier designed them in his spare time. New styles of engineering fascinated them both, with Santos-Dumont’s childhood love of the creations of Jules Verne inspiring him to take to the skies, while Cartier was influenced by the Mark 1 tanks that gave the eponymous watch its case shape and name. Yet, they weren’t immune to beauty either. What defines the two most, however, was their ability to use their creations as both marketing tools and showcases for their exceptional talents; something Cartier continues today with its latest Santos-Dumont Micro-Rotor, which features a replica of Santos-Dumont’s famed plane the Le Demoiselle – named after a small yet graceful Old World crane bird – on its dial-side rotor.
“It is an object of great functional beauty and looks improbably small and fragile,” is the way famed British architect Norman Foster describes the Le Demoiselle in Cartier in Motion; a book published in 2017 to celebrate an exhibition of the same name that took place at the Design Museum and was designed by Foster. “The materials are a mixture of the organic and metallic – bamboo fuselage frame and silk flying surfaces combined with lovingly crafted pipes, lugs, and tension wires. It is the aeronautical equivalent of the later classic Bugatti Type 35 in which expressed engineering detail is elevated to an art form.
“Looking at the technical refinement of this aircraft it is easy to see how Louis Cartier was not only moved to create the first male wristwatch for his aviator friend, but crafted it in the same tradition as the flying machine itself,” he continues. “Santos-Dumont, free from the burden of delving into his waistcoat for a pocket watch, could simply glance down at the Cartier timepiece to improve his performance and concentrate on flying the aircraft with both hands on the controls. To see the diminutive Demoiselle flying above Paris with its translucent flying surfaces glowing against the sky, with the whine of its tiny 30hp Darraq-built engine, must have been a heart-stopping sight.”
While that heart-stopping experience cannot be replicated, we can still appreciate the spirit of the age through the Santos-Dumont. It is a dizzying dial to look at, with an unimpeded view of Cartier’s new automatic skeleton movement that was two years in development and has 212 components suspended between a network of beautifully arranged bridges. In the bottom left of the dial is the movement’s self-winding (as in, with every arm gesture of the watch’s wearer) micro-rotor with the aforementioned miniature replica of Santos-Dumont’s famous aircraft. This is balanced, aesthetically and structurally, by the exposed balance at top left and the openworked barrel on the other side. It is also a love letter to the new Paris of that era.
It is no coincidence that the dial of a Cartier is a bevelled square and that numbers appear to radiate out from the central circle that anchors the hour and minute hand. This was a marque forged in the crucible of Belle Epoque Paris; the Paris of Gustave Eiffel and Baron Hausmann, the man responsible for the gridded architecture the city retains today. That bevelled square case is the base of the Tour Eiffel as seen from one of Santos’ dirigibles, the screws on its bezel are the tower’s rivets, while the way the numerals radiate follows the pattern of the 12 major avenues, including the Champs Elysees and Avenue Victor Hugo, that extend from Place Charles de Gaulle on which, like a monumental sundial, sits the Arc du Triomphe. In keeping with Louis Cartier’s philosophy that decisions that are good for business should also be artistically impressive, the plane rotor, which could be seen as a mere marketing tool on which to build a press release, in the metal reveals itself to be modern, witty, and just a little bit whimsical. Somewhat appropriate given that the man who gave his name to this watch used a dirigible as a form of private transport and hosted dinners in his apartment at tables and chairs suspended from the ceiling so that his guests could experience aerial dining.
This Santos-Dumont continues that Cartier tradition of leading with design, and using these fabulous-to-look-at creations as showcases for its impressive mechanical knowledge. After all, it is no mean feat to skeletonise a movement and change its architecture, so the rotor is on the dial, all without losing the beautiful harmony of proportions this timepiece displays. Alberto, a man who regularly used his flying stunts to drive his aviation business, would no doubt approve.
Photography AM + PM Angèle Moraiz & Paul Mougeot
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