It began as a silk scarf. Designer Gianpaolo Pagni’s cubist equestrian composition was originally conceived for one of Hermès’ most celebrated formats before finding its way onto the dial of a watch. The Arceau Cavalier en Formes is what happens when a house treats its creative archive as a living resource rather than a historical record.
The watch is built on the Arceau collection, which has been part of the Hermès catalogue since 1978 and has always used its round case as an invitation rather than a constraint. Here, that invitation has been accepted with unusual generosity. The dial is not decorated in the conventional sense. It is constructed, layer by layer, through a combination of engraving, miniature painting and sapphire crystal that produces a depth more sculptural than flat.
For the initial design, Pagni drew his inspiration from an equestrian lithograph in the Émile Hermès collection, choosing to retain only the horse and recompose the figure of the rider into a series of geometric motifs, circles and squares arranged in a cubist register that suggests a figure without depicting one.
The execution of the watch itself is meticulous. A sapphire crystal set directly onto the dial carries miniature paintings on both its upper and lower surfaces, creating layered scenes of radiant fragments and subtle shading. Finely engraved leaves unfurl across the surface. Hand-painted blue flat-colour blocks in square and round shapes sit alongside an engraved yellow gold horse at the composition’s centre. The interplay of superimposed techniques, engraving beneath and above paint, transparency revealing depth, produces something that changes as the light changes.
Beneath all of this, the movement earns its place without drawing focus from the decoration above it. The Manufacture H1924, a hand-wound calibre running at 21,600 vibrations per hour with a 90-hour power reserve, carries a minute repeater and a lift tourbillon positioned at 6 o’clock. The tourbillon carriage picks up the double H motif of the historic lift in the Hermès boutique at 24 Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. The minute repeater, audible but invisible within the composition, gives voice to the piece without appearing on its surface. It is a complication chosen for what it contributes emotionally rather than visually.
The 43mm white gold case is fitted with anti-glare sapphire crystal front and back, water-resistant to 3 bar, and presented on a bleu abysse alligator strap made in the Hermès workshops. The case back is sapphire, allowing the H1924 movement to be viewed from the reverse. Only six pieces will be made.
picotandmoss.co.za / hermes.com
