SIHH 2014 - Form and function from CARTIER

Paul O’Neil

January 2014

SIHH 2014 - Form and function from CARTIER

Paul O’Neil

January 2014

It is perhaps because she was born into a family of watchmakers that Carole Forestier, head of fine watchmaking at Cartier, makes her team’s innovative developments seem so self-evident that one wonders why nobody came up with them before. At the 2014 SIHH the brand once again threatens to steamroller us journalists with a seemingly endless flow of new products, each with their own special merits, from the “bread and butter” models right up to the most complicated pieces costing up to half a million euros. But one of the most unexpected developments from the brand comes in the form a new divers’ watch, for which Cartier took up the challenge of creating what some might call a fusion between its familiar use of noble materials in an elegant design and the technical constraints of the ISO 6425 standard for divers’ watches.


CALIBRE DE CARTIER DIVERS’ WATCH: 42mm diameter case with unidirectional ADLC-coated bezel, partially-snailed black dial with Roman numerals (XII in SuperLuminova), sword-shaped hands with SuperLuminova and rubber strap. Water resistant to 300 metres.

Cartier has chosen the Calibre de Cartier case, first introduced in 2010, for its first-ever divers’ watch. It is the latest in the evolution of this line, after a version with metal bracelet (2011) and the chronograph that was presented at the SIHH in 2013. The new timepiece offers a perfect balance between the signature elements that distinguish the Calibre de Cartier and the technical and practical requirements of a divers’ watch: the Roman numerals and small seconds dial are supplemented with SuperLuminova to ensure legibility in the murky depths; a unidirectional “self-lubricating” bezel with an amorphous diamond-like carbon (ADLC) coating is graduated with minute markers to allow dive times to be recorded accurately with no possibility of error and an extra-thick crystal, screw-in case back and screw-in crown ensure water resistance to 300 metres. All this in a case that is only 1.2mm thicker than the standard Calibre de Cartier model, even though the crystal alone is 1mm thicker than the standard crystal.

SIHH 2014 - Form and function from CARTIER

The unidirectional rotating bezel is one of the signature features of a true divers’ watch, since the ISO 6425 standard requires a “time pre-selection mechanism”, for which this kind of bezel is perfect. Cartier paid particular attention to the geometry of the teeth on the gear wheel that turns and locks the bezel to ensure a clicking sound that would reflect the quality of the piece (Carole Forestier compared this to the reassuring sound of a luxury car door closing). The low-friction ADLC, which was also used for the DuoLevel® barrels in the brand’s IDTWO concept watch, means that no further lubrication is required for the bezel. To make sure that the bezel operates perfectly and reliably, it is subjected to no less than 10,800 complete revolutions over a one-and-a-half hour testing period, which equates to two revolutions per second!

The Calibre de Cartier is available with steel, red-gold and two-tone cases and a choice of rubber straps or metal bracelets and is fitted with the brand’s in-house Calibre 1904MC self-winding movement, which operates at 28,800 vibrations per hour and offers a power reserve of 48 hours.

A LESS TORTUOUS DEVELOPMENT

The Tortue, which dates back to 1912, is a perfect example of Cartier’s mastery of the “shaped” watch for which the brand is so renowned. Neither round, nor square, nor tonneau-shaped, the Cartier Tortue – like the Tank, the Baignoire and the Crash collections – sports its own unique geometric form. It is this very form that has been revised in the new models to be presented at the SIHH, with a new flat profile elegantly contrasting with the delicate curves of the case.


TORTUE BY CARTIER: Medium-sized model in 18-carat pink gold with manually-wound manufacture movement calibre 430 MC, brown alligator leather strap with ardillon buckle in pink gold.

Available in two different sizes – small and medium – this refined Tortue will be equally at home on the wrist of a gentleman, in the warm pink-gold version with a brown leather strap, or a lady in the form of a pink-gold, diamond-set case with multi-link pink-gold bracelet. In each case, the models are equipped with Cartier’s own in-house manually-wound mechanical movements, Calibre 430 MC for the medium-sized model and Calibre 8970 MC for the smaller model.


TORTUE BY CARTIER: Small model in 18-carat pink gold with manually-wound manufacture movement calibre 8970 MC, diamond-set case (0.7 carats) and matching pink-gold bracelet.

These calibres are among the 24 movements that the brand has developed in only five years since it first committed itself to what it refers to as “fine watchmaking” in 2008. There will be no let-up in this rate of development, since Carole Forestier promises us five more new movements in 2014. These will once again show off the full range of talents from the manufacture, introducing innovative (and useful) new twists to familiar complications and new forms of decoration. Once again the implementations seem so elegantly simple, yet the whole trick is how Cartier deconstructs the individual elements and functions within a movement to come up with its novel solutions. We look forward to presenting these exceptional pieces in a future issue.