Geneva, Switzerland – Reported by Elite Traveler, the private jet lifestyle magazine
Combining a Minute Repeater and eight animations on the dial, this Bird Repeater was developed in-house by Jaquet Droz painters and engravers. The first piece in red gold took three years in the making.
For many years, whether on the canvas where the painter brings his work into being or the dial where the sculptor applies his relief decoration, Jaquet Droz’s workshops have paid homage to birds and brought them to life. The Bird Repeater, conceived by the craftsmen of the House, blends the history, know-how and imaginative power of Jaquet Droz. Engravers and painters have worked together to produce the yellow, blue, white and deep black of the birds’ plumage, the perfectly balanced volumes, the finely detailed wisps of grass forming the nest, and to achieve the realism of this scene.
Born in 1721, Pierre Jaquet-Droz was above all a child of the Swiss Jura. In these valleys that are still today the cradle of Swiss watchmaking excellence, there is a sense of life in communion with the natural surroundings. The sound of birdsong accompanies the cycle of the seasons.
Beautiful, free and fascinating, birds captivated the age, and the young watchmaker was to make this trend his own. At first incorporated in real birdcages, these creations were soon transformed into pocket watches and table clocks of proportions as small as they were refined. The Bird Repeater is an authentic automaton, with a cam system inherited directly from the century of Enlightenment, and it calls on the resources of all the decorative crafts.
The Bird Repeater represents a pair of blue tits, symbolic of Pierre Jaquet-Droz’s native Jura region, together over the nest containing their fledglings. Eight different animation mechanisms act in synchronisation.
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