Vacheron Constantin and the Memory of a Place
- Editor @ La Page M
- Apr 3, 2025
- 2 min read
The single-piece Les Cabinotiers editions by Vacheron Constantin, revealed during Watches & Wonders 2025, are steeped in the Maison’s heritage.
The first model, rendered in Grand Feu miniature enamel, captures the view from an 18th-century lithograph by Jean DuBois. Painted by hand in soft pastels on a white enamel base, the image unfolds across the platinum dial in layered transparency and light. The delicacy of the technique—requiring high-temperature firings after each brushstroke—reveals a vision both historically precise and dreamlike. The tower and surrounding Place de Bel-Air emerge as if through a memory gently preserved, suspended in enamel.
To mark its 270th anniversary, Vacheron Constantin unveils a poetic homage to Geneva—its birthplace and enduring home—through a trio of unique timepieces: Les Cabinotiers - Tribute to the Tour de l’Île.
A second watch, cased in platinum, draws from a 20th-century Charnaux postcard and interprets it through the Maison’s rarely seen technique of figurative guillochage. With architectural lines hand-engraved onto a sandblasted gold dial, the buildings become drawing-like forms, softened by enamel and illuminated by the tower at the centre, painted once again in Grand Feu. This union of métiers d’art—guilloché and enamel—produces depth and atmosphere, echoing the evolving texture of Geneva itself.
The third edition presents a fully engraved 18K pink gold dial, inspired by an 1822 etching by Pierre Escuyer. In subtle bas-relief, the Rhône, its bridges, the Tour de l’Île, and its quiet surrounding life are carved in exquisite detail. At just one millimetre thick, the engraving gives way to light and shadow—clouds in satin, rooftops in polish, pedestrians mid-step. On each reverse, the caseback bears Geneva’s motto: Post Tenebras Lux. As the Maison continues to look forward, these three tributes look back—with clarity, reverence, and unmistakable craft.
