tony p
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JLC Goes Large in Shanghai - Part 1: The Manufacturer Comes to You
Last week I posted a little "teaser" about having seen production models of the new Duomètres. This was a propos of a brief visit to one of Shanghai's most exclusive shopping malls at Plaza 66, where I was meeting a friend for lunch. To my surprise, I found the entire ground floor foyer filled up with displays for the JLC travelling horological circus known as "The Manufacture Comes to You".
Not only that - I was also informed that JLC had just opened a new boutique downstairs, in the newly-created "Watch and Jewellery Concourse" located at the basement level of the complex.
I simply didn't have time that day to really take in all the goodies on display, but I vowed to return. And return I did, picking (as is my particular talent) one of the most god-awful days of the year to do it. Yesterday, mindful of the opening line of William Gibson's classic sci-fi novel Neuromancer: "The sky was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel", blasted by Arctic winds and horizontal sleet, out into the tooth-chattering cold I ventured - sights set firmly on the forbidding spires of Plaza 66.
(Folks, those dark smudges in the sky aren't clouds, and they aren't forcefield-shrouded North Korean spy drones either. They are in fact dirty big raindrops on my lens filter.)
Making my way gratefully inside, I was greeted first by this spectacular sight:
...and then by a heartwarming tableau of horological pleasures to come, stretching out before me:
Proceeding along the gently curving carpet, I was guided past various JLC historical treasures - some magnificently executed complicated pocket watches, early Reversos, fine middle-period Futurematics, triple calendars, Grand Reveils and other delights - until who should I stumble upon, but:
Yes, the master of enamel art himself, Miklos Merczel, busy at his bench creating something very special:
The guy in the photo is Sun Zhongshan (or Sun Yat-Sen), founder of the New China Party (later the Guomindang) and leader of the Chinese democratic revolution which overthrew the Manchu Empire in 1911. A venerated figure in Chinese history, and a most suitable choice of subject matter for this exhibition.
Some more of Merczel's superb creations on display - including pieces from his "Four Seasons" series, modelled after the work of Alphonse Mucha:
Reversos are ideally suited not only to enamelling, but also engraving:
Now to a few of the more whizz-bang products from JLC's incredibly prolific output of extraordinary pieces. Firstly, a functioning prototype of the Extreme LAB, which will be the first production wristwatch to operate entirely without lubrication (thanks to its liberal deployment of high-tech materials and surface treatments - and boy am I happy to slip the word "deployment" into a PuristS forum post in its correct context!).
One might well ask, if the Extreme LAB requires no lubrication, why the hell did JLC bother fitting it with a tourbillon? I suppose the answer is, "because they could".
and a look at the LAB's futuristic carbon-fibre-and-metal rotor on the flip side:
Now to the star of Basel 2006, and still (I believe) the holder of the title "world's most complicated production wristwatch" with no less than 127 functions (OK, I exaggerate slightly) - the amazing 75th anniversary Reverso à Tryptique:
A close-up look at the Tryptique's eccentric tourbillon, fitted with an ellipse isometer escapement, ultra-light titanium cage, and silicon componentry:
Nestled in the same display cabinet as these two marvels, was this breathtaking timepiece - the Master Perpetual Skeleton:
Seeing this piece immediately took me back to my visit to Le Sentier last June, when I had the opportunity to photograph the beautiful girl who created this stunning baseplate:
What a gorgeous piece of skeletonisation this is! Really one of the most beautiful of JLC's creations - until you flip it over:
Ugh! Looks like the bottom of my tool box on a bad day:
Oh no no no, we forgot about that one. Move along folks, nothing to see here! Time for a trip down the escalator to the new JLC Shanghai Boutique instead...
Cheers
Tony P
JLC Goes Large in Shanghai Part II: The New Boutique at Plaza 66 - CLICK HERE
JLC Goes Large in Shanghai Part III: The Mighty Duomètre à Chronographe - CLICK HERE
added links to Part II and III
added to Editor's Pick
