This year’s Watches and Wonders luxury fair featured plenty of grand and innovative designs, but one of the most unique and ambitious revelations was the Tambour Carpe Diem from Louis Vuitton.
The result of two years of development and over 320 hours of meticulous construction, engraving, enamelling and gem setting, The Tambour Carpe Diem has finally arrived into the world of luxury timepieces.
The fashion Maison has made bespoke watches for private clients before, but this is the first one to emerge publicly from the ateliers of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, and it’s a masterwork of engineering that focuses on the symbolic art of the Vanitas.
Historically, jacquemarts on watches are frequently decorative rather than functional, featuring alongside the hands used to tell the time. However, the automata on the Tambour Carpe Diem tells the time on demand in spectacular style.
“We wanted to bring to the jacquemart our vision of the 21st century with all the energy and creativity characteristic of our brand since it began producing watches in 2002,” says Michel Navas, master watchmaker at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.
A touch of the snake push-piece triggers the 16-second animation that brings the snake on the dial to life, slithering aside to display the hour in the middle of the skull, while the end of the tail jealously guarding a brilliant-cut diamond, flicks towards the minutes. Meanwhile, one of the skull’s eyes opens to reveal the brands signature Monogram flower, and its jaw, complete with one gold tooth, drops to expose the poet Horace’s famous phrase ‘Carpe Diem’ emerges- a reminder to make every day count.
The overall aesthetic of the luxury watch is of a contemporary Vanitas, the symbolic motif representing the transience of life, with the skull reflecting the inevitability of death and the hourglass to denote the shortness of life. However, the watch is anything but macabre, thanks to 50 hours of meticulously executed enamelling by Swiss artist Anita Porchet. She has infused both the snake and the skull with such movement and levity that it’s impossible not to smile at the maxim to “seize the day”.
On the wrist, the 14mm thick rose gold case is contrasted beautifully by its black alligator strap. On the back, the hand-wound LV 525 Calibre mechanical movement inside has also been assembled as a skull, including 426 separate components and 48 jewels. With a jumping hour, power reserve display, a retrograde minute, and the automata, the Tambour Carpe Diem combines four complications that have never been brought together before.
The overall effect is one of extreme sophistication, from the elegant hourglass power reserve indicator to the miniature Monogram snakeskin, tempered by a hint of subversion in the grinning skull with those painstakingly enamelled teeth. In the Tambour Carpe Diem, Louis Vuitton has produced a truly exceptional watch that melds the historic art of automata with 21st-century design prowess and a timely reminder to seize the moment.