Poetry Of Time: Discover Van Cleef & Arpels’ Distinctive Vision Of Watchmaking

Delve into Van Cleef & Arpels’ world of extraordinary watches, where time stands still and beauty abounds, inspired by four key creative universes

There are watches that simply tell the time, and others that also invite you to dream. For Van Cleef & Arpels, timekeeping is a canvas, an art form that channels creativity, placing the mechanics of measuring hours and minutes at the service of storytelling capable of stirring deep emotions. The Maison’s Poetic Complications collection transforms the wrist into a miniature stage, where stories of love, nature, dance, and the cosmos unfold with each passing moment.

As Rainer Bernard, Head of Watchmaking Research and Development at Van Cleef & Arpels, explains, Poetry of Time is a unique approach to watchmaking founded on marking the passage of time through the telling of a tale. Each watch immortalises a fleeting instant, a kiss at midnight, twirling blossoms, or a ballerina poised mid-pirouette. They form delicate tableaux vivants that spring to life through a rare alchemy of art and horology. This is made possible by marrying the savoir-faire of High Jewellery with the finesse of rare métiers d’art and the ingenuity of inventive mechanical movements.

Here, we delve into the four signature themes of the Maison’s most remarkable masterpieces.

Love Beyond Time

From star-crossed lovers to lantern-lit balls, these creations tell of the most epic romances. Each watch becomes a miniature stage where love stories unfold upon exquisite dials

Love is the Heartbeat of Van Cleef & Arpels. The Maison’s story began in 1906 at 22 Place Vendôme, born from the 1895 marriage of Esther, known as Estelle, Arpels and Alfred Van Cleef, a union that brought together two jewellery families. That romantic spark still inspires its creations, from the first heart-shaped diamond recorded in its sales register to today’s most enchanting feats of watchmaking.Merging exceptional craftsmanship with technical ingenuity, these creations capture some of the most magical moments in a love story, such as the initial spark of love, and the first kiss.

The first rendez-vous and kiss of a couple are the subject of the Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux collection of watches. The series of timepieces dedicated to this pivotal moment of the courtship transforms the dial into a miniature stage where two lovers, standing at opposite ends of a bridge, draw closer as the hours and minutes pass. The lady on the left marks the hours, her head moving beneath an arc of numerals, while the gentleman on the right marks the minutes. Together, they perform a graceful forward-and-backward dance that culminates in a tender embrace and kiss at 12:00, either midnight or midday. Thanks to the feature “animation à la demande” – an on-demand animation – the scene can be replayed at will, allowing the wearer to relive this suspended instant, either in cherished remembrance or eager anticipation.

“It’s a secret way of telling time,” says Rainer Bernard, Head of Watchmaking R&D. This poetic encounter plays out in both the Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux and Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux Jour (day) versions, as the background takes on different ambiances masterfully created with métiers d’art techniques. In the Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux watch, a city sleeping beneath a canopy of stars is rendered in a palette of black, grey, and blue. On the Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux Jour model, the sky blushes in soft pinks and purples to evoke the glow of a daytime rendezvous. In both versions, the lovers and the bridge are intricately shaped, their details brought to life through precise artisanry.

If the vignettes seem delicately painted in watercolour, it is because the artisans at Van Cleef & Arpels have employed the centuries-old technique of grisaille enamel, developed in Limoges, France, in the 16th century. Here, plays of light and shade are achieved using only two tones of enamel. First, the background is coated with a deep, dark layer, then polished to perfection. The scene is drawn with a brush or fine needle, applying finely ground white enamel, from the lightest to the darkest areas. Over successive firings subtle gradations emerge, bathing the dial in a mysterious glow. For the Lady Arpels Pont des Amoureux Jour watch, Van Cleef & Arpels has developed a novel version of coloured grisaille enamel. Against a white background, pink and blue enamels are layered to bring to the fore the gentle luminosity of day.This process requires around 40 hours of work, with each dial undergoing roughly 10 firings to achieve the desired effect.

These romantic stories unfold on the dials thanks to the Maison’s mechanical ingenuity: a double-retrograde movement that carries each figure along its arc before returning them to their starting point, ready to begin the dance anew. The theme continues in the Lady Arpels Bal des Amoureux Automate timepiece, where the couple’s tryst takes place at an open-air dance café typical of Paris’s guinguettes of the 19th century, and sees the lovers kiss at noon and midnight. It is storytelling through watchmaking, a love story told whenever the wearer wishes to see it again.

Nature’s Finest

With charming cherry blossoms and fluttering butterfly wings, Van Cleef & Arpels conjures a magical world of flora and fauna in an ode to mother nature

For Van Cleef & Arpels, nature is inseparable from the passage of time. Flowers bloom and fade, seasons shift, breezes stir the grass and branches; this deep connection to the natural world infuses the Maison’s watchmaking with both vitality and poetry, giving rise to creations where time is told not only through numbers standing for hours and minutes, but in the subtle choreography of petals, leaves, and wings.

“For me, the Poetry of Time is telling time by telling a story, and not just through the traditional means of watchmaking,” explains Mr Bernard. “For example, by depicting a garden whose flowers open and close. You must hold the poetic key and pause to read the time. At first glance, a magnificent scene is revealed. Then, a second look shows the beauty of passing time…”

The Lady Arpels Heures Florales watch brings to life the dream of the 18th-century botanist Carl von Linné, who imagined a floral clock where the hours would be marked by plants opening their blossoms at precise moments of the day. In Van Cleef & Arpels’ interpretation, a true jewelled garden unfolds on the dial. Within a 38 mm white-gold case set with brilliant-cut diamonds, summer is evoked in a palette of blues and greens. On the Lady Arpels Heures Florales Cerisier watch, light butterflies flit among flowers whose corollas are painted in miniature, among branches sculpted in gold and clouds carved from iridescent mother-of-pearl.

To read the time, one simply counts the number of flowers in bloom, a display brought to life by the Maison’s artisans with up to 166 moving elements powered by an automatic calibre. The complication is developed, assembled and controlled internally, with three different opening and closing sequences, giving the impression of the randomness that can be found in nature. Every petal, branch, and cloud, some 226 individual components in total, has been worked with the finesse of High Jewellery, where white and yellow diamonds mingle with miniature painting and the shimmer of mother-of-pearl. On the reverse, a sapphire-crystal caseback reveals the oscillating weight and its enamelled dragonfly or butterfly motifs, allowing the poetry to continue even in this hidden view.

If the Heures Florales creations speak of nature’s rhythms, the Lady Arpels Brise d’Été watch captures the gentle sway of flowers in a summer breeze. Four years of development were devoted to perfecting the delicate motion of its floral tableau, for which technology serves as a discreet accomplice to creativity. “For us, technology serves creativity – it allows poetry to express itself,” says Mr Bernard. “The ultimate goal is to infuse each of our timepieces with emotion.”

Housed in a 38 mm white-gold case with a diamond-set bezel, the Lady Arpel Brise d’Été timepiece features a white mother-of-pearl dial as the backdrop for a bucolic scene. The foreground blooms with flowers and curved plique-à-jour blades of grass, while blue blossoms, crafted in vallonné enamel, are crowned with pistils of spessartite garnet. Leaves are rendered in tsavorite garnet and champlevé enamel, their rich green hue echoing the freshness of summer. In place of traditional hands, two exquisitely crafted butterflies, in plique-à-jour transparent enamel, glide across the dial, taking turns to indicate the time. At a press of the pusher at 8 o’clock, the butterflies flutter off upon a light summer breeze.

Both timepieces prove, once more, how, in the hands of Van Cleef & Arpels, the measurement of time becomes a living spectacle. Whether through the opening of flowers or the flutter of butterfly wings, the Maison transforms the passing hours and minutes into moments to cherish.

Balletic Wonder

Fairies and ballerinas take centre stage at Van Cleef & Arpels, where life is delicately breathed into every wafting wand and every twirling tutu

Fairies first graced the creations of Van Cleef & Arpels in the 1940s, embodying freedom, joy and hope. Today, these winged figures offered an imaginative way to tell time, their delicate forms seamlessly merging function with storytelling, as in the Lady Féerie watch, where a diamond-faced fairy lifts her wand to mark the minutes.

Ballerinas soon took their place alongside the fairies, inspired by Louis Arpels’ lifelong passion for the ballet. Since the 1920s, Louis, an ardent devotee of dance, had often taken his nephew Claude to the Opéra Garnier, just a short stroll from the Maison’s Place Vendôme boutique in Paris. In the early 1940s, this love of the stage found expression in the Maison’s first ballerina clips, some paying homage to legendary dancers such as Marie Camargo and Anna Pavlova, and today the Maison supports contemporary dance around the world with its initiative Dance Reflections. Over the decades, these feminine figures became one of Van Cleef & Arpels’ most enduring signatures, reinterpreted in countless beautiful variations. The Lady Arpels Ballerine Enchantée watch’s tutu unfurls while the Lady Féerie watch sees its protagonist elegantly wave her wand.

The veils of the tutu are made of plique-à-jour enamel, which gives them a shimmering appearance similar to that of small stained glass. Additionally, retrograde displays and hidden mechanics create lyrical motion. “We combine techniques from the worlds of jewellery and watchmaking, particularly a number of selected artistic métiers in which the Maison excels,” Mr. Bernard continues. “This allows us to bring a story to an exciting new level.” The Lady Arpels Ballerines Musicales watches epitomise this approach, which echo the colours and themes of the three-part ballet Jewels, created in the 1960s by choreographer George Balanchine. Each combines a carillon and a music box to play its own melody, while presenting a different school of dance; French, American and Russian.

Due to the Maison’s expertise in métiers d’art, such horological miracles are now within the realm of possibility. For its three-dimensional fairies, the Maison relies upon the art of gold sculpting, which is a discipline that gives flat precious metals the ability to demonstrate voluminous plasticity and liveliness. The craftsman begins by engraving the outlines in white gold, gradually refining the drapery of a ballerina’s skirt, the curve of a wing, or the sweep of a wand. Each feature is formed entirely by hand using engraving tools.

When it comes to Van Cleef & Arpels, the magic does not end on the dial, it continues on the back of the watch. At this point, the rear of the case transforms into a miniature canvas, and engraving and enamelling can be used to convey a different side of the story or to bring the narrative that was first displayed on the dial to a close.

The process of carving relief onto such a small area needs complete control of both the hand and the tool. While gold engraving presents its own unique set of challenges, artisans also painstakingly instil volume, depth and emotion in the dial with myriad materials complemented by intricate enamelling techniques.

Poetic Astronomy

The High Heavens have inspired myriad Van Cleef & Arpels creations, with scintillating galaxies transformed into works of art upon the wrist

The vast black sky, which is dotted with the sparkling white specks of stars and the moon, has been a source of inspiration for poets, singers, and painters for centuries, and it never fails to overwhelm us with awe and amazement. Back in 1907, one of the Maison’s first daybooks mentions the sale of a star brooch in pearls and diamonds, and in the 1920s and 30s, Minaudières and clips were adorned with the moon. Culminating in the stunning Lady Arpels Planétarium watch animated by a swirling cosmos, Van Cleef & Arpels has endeavoured to portray a vast and varied patchwork of feelings stirred in us by the heavens.

The Parisian Maison is like an artist in that it turns to the heavens, converting celestial movements into moments of enchantment to admire, reflect on and savour. This can be seen in the form of a shooting star flashing across a nocturnal dial or the sun trading places with the moon on the wrist-stage.

This celestial creativity finds one of its most poetic interpretations in the watches known as the 38mm Lady Arpels Jour Nuit and 33mm Lady Jour Nuit. These timepieces provide a little cosmic realm that can be worn on the wrist. The moons and stars are set with diamonds and shown to be engaged in an endless pursuit of the sun, which is portrayed in either guilloché yellow gold or yellow sapphires. A 24-hour revolving disc is responsible for orchestrating the leisurely, graceful, and never-ending chase. This weighty disc spins almost imperceptibly, transforming the dial into a living sky in miniature – a genuine moment of wonder.

It is possible to achieve depth and dimension by using Murano aventurine glass, which has a surface that is midnight blue and flecked with golden inclusions that conjure a night that is clear and with stars. On the rear, a sapphire crystal case back displays an oscillating weight that is embellished with polished stars and a fairy. This is an emblem of the dreamlike realm that Van Cleef & Arpels creates, and it was applied using the enamel decal process. Guilloché and plique-à-jour enamel are two kinds of decor that the craftsmen at the Maison have perfected in order to create surfaces that are as smooth as a painting and endowed with sculptural depth.

This is a remarkable accomplishment considering the limited space available in a watch case. With the Lady Arpels Jour Nuit and the Lady Jour Nuit watches, Van Cleef & Arpels brings to our attention the fact that the passage of time is not only something to be measured, but rather a beautiful invitation to halt and contemplate.

Imagery: © Van Cleef & Arpels

Edited By Charlie Boyd. Art Direction By Paul Solomons

From the Harper’s Bazaar Arabia November 2025 Issue.