Messages: 25840 Location: Washington, DC
Registered: November 2003
INDUSTRY NEWS - Faberge in the New Millennium
Wed, 17 January 2007 09:58
The successful launch in 2005 of a new generation of Faberge wristwatches heralded, a new era in timekeeping. The comeback of the famous wristwatches was long-awaited – this is the first collection since 1918. Now, at last they are back: timepieces with that unmistakable Faberge look. The hallmarks of a Faberge wristwatch are the fire-enamelled and hand-guilloched dials that identify each watch as a precious object.
The men’s collection includes the Agathon, which pays homage to Carl Peter Fabergé’s little-known younger brother, who was a brilliant designer. It features a round case and the rotor in the shape of the Faberge eagle. It is available as an automatic watch only, with large date, small seconds, and annual calendar with moon-phase indicator.
New is the Agathon M1107, which features a half-skeleton wristwatch. The case affords a view of the timepiece's inner workings. This masterpiece, an aesthetic tribute to the mechanical era, is limited worldwide to just 25 timepieces, in both white and pink gold. The movement plate is hand-guilloched, and the train bridges are skeletonized, engraved, and decorated with hand-blued screws. The movement plate is embellished with three diamonds set in gold, with one diamond concealed below the balance spring. The dial is a miniature masterpiece in itself: set in the guilloched silver dial with off-centre hour and minute display is a further small gold enamelled dial for the seconds display.
With the creation of the Carree Collection, a cultural skill from bygone days that has almost completely fallen by the wayside – hand-winding – is experiencing a renaissance. Carree pays homage to the Old Master’s pre-Revolutionary concept of time. In those days, self-winding had not reached its current level of sophistication, so wristwatches still had to be wound daily by hand. It was not until 1935 that temperature-resistant hairsprings permitting control of the watch rate were developed. The characteristic rectangular case harks back to Fabergé’s early designs for wristwatches from the years before the Revolution.
- Jorge Merino