Richard Mille unveils 10 unique high jewellery tourbillons
This watch, featuring an in-house new automatic tourbillon that is slim, has an ultrahigh performance and is enhanced with sparkling diamonds, mother-of-pearl, onyx and black sapphires. Richard Mille presents 10 variations of the RM 71-01 Automatic Tourbillon Talisman that weave together cutting-edge technology and the unique sculptural qualities of fine art jewellery
It’s all about the art of surprise and wonder, the inexorable desire to create. To understand, one must go back three years to the beginning of this adventure, when Cécile Guenat, now Ladies’ Collection Director at Richard Mille, was first asked to join the company and design new creations. The challenge proved irresistible for the young woman who earned her spurs in the world of fine jewellery.
After graduating from the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD), she gained experience with a jeweller in Lausanne, and later with a London jewellery designer, where she created collections for a number of couture houses and designer brands. From initial sketches to the choice of stones, Cécile Guenat demonstrates the meticulous attention to detail that conjures luck by sheer talent and passion.
Talisman is a name that evokes nothing less than magical protection. This collection was born from a magnetic alchemy at the intersection of tribal arts and art deco, and is the fruit of very different influences. In designing this collection, Cécile Guenat drew not only on Art Deco, but on the Tribal Arts—masks, African sculptures, etc.—whose impact on all great modern and contemporary artists has been enormous.
The contrasts, geometry, and sacred character of these objects fascinate her all the more because they prefigured today’s design through the fusion of content and form. The notion of a collection took shape very early in the initial sketches. Thus emerged a number of interpretations, with ten different variations on the case and dial. Cécile Guenat chose to glorify the skeleton movement through the many possibilities for setting and engraving the case. Heightened by sparkling stones, the shape of the dials reveals two deliberately distinct worlds, one that is organic and the other more urban.
A masterpiece in every sense, the RM 71-01 Automatic Tourbillon Talisman abolishes the distinction between jewellery and its case. The movement, dial and case maintain an aesthetic, technical and visual dialogue in each version. With this horological tourbillon, the brand inducts the Calibre CRMT1, its eighth, in-house calibre. The baseplate protecting the tourbillon’s rotation remains open to preserve transparency. Skeletonised and tonneau-shaped, with a thickness no greater than 6.2 mm and a weight of just 8 grams, the Calibre CRMT1 – housed in a case of white or red gold – is clothed in titanium, and boasts a 50-hour power reserve.
Throughout the workshops there is an agreement: beauty must be such that the self-evidence of the finished piece erases the painstaking labour and hours spent at the workbench. According to Salvador Arbona, Technical Director for Movements, the first challenge was to produce an automatic tourbillon movement that could be housed in the narrow, curved case of an RM 037. The second was to meet all in-house standards in terms of performance, be it chronometric results, automatic winding or shock resistance.
Far from a fragile item, this ladies’ watch is designed to be worn day-in day-out, precisely because it has an automatic winding mechanism. Its architecture is unobtrusive enough to bring the dial, hands and accessories to the fore.
Cécile Guenat was adamant about offering jewelled fittings to match the mechanical sophistication of the brand. Never has a piece called upon so many different crafts: jewellery artisans, dial-maker and watchmakers were put to the test by the complexity of this extraordinary piece. While the artisanal and artistic combine their expressions in the skeletonisation, settings, and production of the dials; the mechanism itself here serves to articulate ideal proportions.
The RM 71-01 radiates in all directions, but with symmetry; each and every segment of stones systematically extends or echoes one of the movement’s internal vectors. Each of the 10 dials crowns the central portion of the tourbillon. Each dial, a mere 0.9 mm in thickness, is hand set. This component is an immense technical challenge because of the many different finishing operations required: sandblasting, polishing, etc. – all this in a very small area arranged on several levels.
The bezel is adorned with diamonds in permutations that vary in the number, shape and size of the stones according to the version. The case back is engraved with matt bands that contrast strikingly with the brilliance of the stones and the high polish of all other surfaces. The new RM 71-01 Automatic Tourbillon Talisman captures the passage of time in all its myriad facets, a scintillating amulet.
