Last year, when JCK published a dispatch from the opening party for the Landmark, Tiffany & Co.’s renovated Fifth Avenue flagship in New York City, we included a few quotes from CEO Anthony Ledru, who spoke about the Tiffany’s success with high jewelry—particularly anything by 1960s designer Jean Schlumberger, whose work Ledru described as “the ultimate signifier of what Tiffany stands for.”
The Bird on a Rock brooch, arguably Schlumberger’s most famous design, is, by all accounts, the centerpiece of Tiffany’s high jewelry efforts. So it should come as no surprise that the Blue Box retailer has now adapted the design to a high jewelry watch, Bird on a Flying Tourbillon, available in a limited edition of 25.
The 39 mm white gold watch features a natural turquoise dial, a diamond-set sub-dial displaying hours and minutes, a pair of diamond-set birds that look as if they’re flying against the backdrop of an unblemished turquoise sky, and a flying tourbillon mechanism housed beneath a faceted sapphire crystal dome.
Look closely and you’ll see that the turquoise dial is composed of 16 wafer-thin gem slices cut into cloud-like shapes and arranged edge to edge using an intricate technique known as marquetry. Some of the pieces are set on slightly different levels, adding a sense of depth and movement to the dial. All told, the marquetry work required 45 hours to complete.
The miniature diamond birds, a Schlumberger signature, took an additional 30 hours of sculpting and setting work. The watch—equipped with a bespoke hand-wound movement (Caliber AFT24T01) developed by the Swiss haute manufacture d’horlogerie Artime—is set with 848 diamonds (3.9 cts. t.w.), including 147 diamonds for each bird, reflecting more than 100 hours of setting work in total. Talk about sparks flying!
Top: Bird on a Flying Tourbillon watch in 39 mm 18k white gold case with 3.9 cts. t.w. diamonds, price on request; Tiffany & Co. (all images provided courtesy of Tiffany & Co.)
Follow JCK on Instagram: @jckmagazineFollow JCK on Twitter: @jckmagazine
Follow JCK on Facebook: @jckmagazine
