The Chamber of Wonders<\/p>\n
In 2015, Girard Perregaux’s “Chambre des Merveilles” collection opened the door to the infinite spaces of miniature creation offered by the tradition of cabinets of curiosities, which were rife in Europe and the rest of the world during the Renaissance era. Heteroclite, imbued with magic and fantasy, sometimes with a scientific justification based on discoveries or imaginary tales, the treasures piled up there all had a whiff of adventure about them. <\/p>\n
The infinitely small is home to the creative impulses of artists and craftsmen in the rare trades that Swiss haute horlogerie has renamed m\u00e9tiers d’art. In 2016, Girard Perregaux continues its original celebration of dexterity, meticulousness and patience with the second part of the “Chambre des Merveilles”. These values of aesthetics and craftsmanship, which have been at the heart of the Manufacture since 1791, are given a new lease of life here, in the small space of a watch dial. Against a backdrop of poetry, the call of the sea and fantasy, with a watermark of happy marriages or improbable unions between exceptional materials and rarefied techniques. <\/p>\n
In 2016, the brand is adding a trilogy of numbered pieces to its Girard Perregaux 1966 rose gold collection, featuring an automatic Manufacture caliber whose dials celebrate the vision of the earth from the universe, or of the universe from the earth’s soil. These genuine interplanetary journeys open the “Chambre des Merveilles” to new, colorful readings of the past, to new understandings of referential objects that have emerged from universal history. They are the original encounter between the manufacturing arts of a mountain region dedicated to watchmaking excellence and the multidisciplinary knowledge of openness to the world.
\nMore than mere demonstrations of manual dexterity, the cartographic representations eproduced and reinterpreted on the dials of the three 2016 “Chambre des Merveilles” models celebrate the visions of scholars and famous figures from the history of mankind. They are accounts of perceptions that bear witness to the state of knowledge at the time their illustrious authors expressed them. Their relationship to the passage of time and the freezing of certainties is undeniable. <\/p>\n
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