From Jules Verne to the Little Prince, and from Georges Melies to Neil Armstrong, the Moon has embodied all the dreams and challenges of humankind. And it was for the moon that Ateliers Louis Moinet reached, to craft the extraordinary Metropolis, as its contribution to the Only Watch auction, to enable children to aspire to a brighter future.
Ateliers Louis Moinet has summoned the very essence of its knowhow to produce a unique timepiece, “Metropolis for Only Watch” – a most worthy successor to Louis Moinet’s own Compteur de Tierces from 1816, the first chronograph in history, which was also used for observational astronomy.
The Metropolis offers an artistic vision of our nearest neighbor. The moon’s illuminated face is portrayed on the dial. Its hidden, dark side features on the rear of the watch, on the rotor. The piece sports a gold-plated dial, for which the firm has performed another first in terms of decoration: its face is first gilded – and then hand-punched to form lunar ‘craters’.
To complete the metaphor, Ateliers Louis Moinet has filled these craters with genuine fragments of lunar meteorites. By combining both its artisanal skill with dials and its expertise in the craftsmanship of stones and meteorites – now one of the firm’s hallmarks – Ateliers Louis Moinet has produced a uniquely beautiful sidereal work featuring amazing miniature painting.
This dial is and will remain the only one of its kind in the world. Close to its edge, between 8 o’clock and 11 o’clock, Louis Moinet reveals the piece’s beating heart: an in-house movement, the LM31 caliber. Above the visible escapement, a small seconds hand glides over a sapphire crystal counter, slightly smoked to ensure it is perfectly readable. The hour hands are in blued steel, in the purest fine watchmaking tradition.
Featuring Louis Moinet’s signature “dewdrop” tips, they trace a circle around a powder-coated black flange. The 43.2 mm diameter steel case reveals the entire underside of the movement through a sapphire crystal case-back, around which the words “Pièce Unique – Only Watch 2017” are engraved. The watch is wound by means of an oscillating weight decorated with a concentric Clou de Paris pattern and a fragment of lunar meteorite – another finishing first for the Ateliers.
