Introducing: Louis Vuitton’s Latest Automata Combine Artistry And High Horology To Travel Around The World And Beyond (Live Pics)

Earlier this week, Louis Vuitton announced their most recent automata, and there’s no arguing that these watches represent a niché within a niché within a niché of watchmaking. Incredibly expensive, often completely impractical for telling the time, and with a focus on mechanical and artistic craft, they’re anything but daily wear watches. In fact, 99.9999 (I could go on) percent of readers will probably never see automata in person, but the craft of making these moving pieces of horological art plays a large part in horological history.

Automata were often the thing of royalty or at least the very wealthy. Accounts of the complex mechanisms required to animate what are essentially early robots that tell time date back to the 3rd Century BCE during the Han Dynasty in China, but much more recently, Swiss manufacturer Jaquet-Droz was credited for the creation of the singing bird box in 1785. See, that’s recent, right? 

Yes, other brands still make mechanical automata – Ulysse Nardin is known for its X-rated pieces, for instance – but Louis Vuitton has started to dominate the stage with things like their GPHG-winning Tambour “Carpe Diem.” Early this year, the night before the launch of the brand’s collaboration with Kari Voutilainen, we got a preview of LV’s three latest automata, and they blew me away. So, now that the embargo is lifted, here are the goods.

Tambour Bushido Automata

If you remember any past automata from Louis Vuitton, then you likely are thinking of the brand’s “Carpe Diem” watch. In that case, the new “Bushido” release this year should be familiar to you. The watch is powered by the same LV 525 caliber with 426 components and a 100-hour power reserve (indicated by the sun rising above Mount Fuji). The watch’s standard display is an idle state, and it only displays the time on demand. When you press the button at 2 o’clock, the display reveals the time. You can see the watch in action in Louis Vuitton’s video below.

The dial and push piece to activate the automaton took 140 hours for the engraving. The Samurai’s menpo, or facial armor, is engraved in white gold using bas-relief, while the helmet’s yokai creature at the top of the forehead is also carved out of rose gold and features ruby-set eyes. When you press the button on the case, the yokai moves to the side, displaying a jump hour display while the katana moves into place, showing the number of minutes elapsed in the hour. After a few seconds, the dial changes further. The eyes open further and reveal a more intense look, the samurai’s left eye transforms from a rounded LV Monogram Flower into a pointed one, and the mouth opens to unveil the word “Bushido” in Japanese.

I photographed the movement side of the watch, but after I finished, I sadly realized I hadn’t cleaned it carefully. So, to save you the dust spots, I’m sharing a picture from LV showing the red lacquer yokai and rose gold movement. The entire design from top to bottom seems incredibly well thought-out to carry that through line of “Bushido” storytelling.

The case engraving is pretty incredible as well, and accented with red enamel, all of which took an additional 200 hours. I could also write a few thousand words about the enameling techniques used on the watch, but I’ll stick to the highlights. The golden tone of the dial is made using the paillonné enamel technique; an underlying layer of pink enamel was first set with silver leaf, then covered with two layers of translucent enamel for the gold tone. Then, a thin layer of fondant enamel was applied to the dial to give it a shiny finish. Mount Fuji is done in cloisonné enamel.

Going back to the mask, I also want to talk a bit about the craftsmanship here. Master engraver Dick Steenman sculpted the mask which was then covered in two layers of red enamel. The piece was then treated with a special layer of painted enamel for a nearly matte and “antiqued” finish. The eye of the mask combines cloisonné enamel for the outer eye and paillonné enamel with a tiny piece of gold for the center of the eye. The helmet (“kabuto”) was engraved out of rose gold, then fired at high temperature using the calamine technique, which creates a thin layer of carbonaceous residue, which was then further worked by hand so the gold underneath could shine.

There are dozens of other little features and nods to the brand’s heritage, including a variety of monogram flowers, gems, and more. The 18K pink gold case and lugs measure 46.8mm by 14.4mm, which is a big (and heavy) watch by most metrics. But if you’ve got the style and guts to wear it, I think the size will be the last thing on your mind.

The price is $755,000 and more information can be found here.

Tambour Taiko Galactique

The Bushido watch is pretty out there in terms of extreme design and aesthetic, but for something a bit more light-hearted and (I’m sorry, I have to say it, I can’t not say it, here it comes) out of this world, this is the new Tambour Taiko Galactique. I would say that this was the crowd favorite for a watch you’d want to wear – if you had around a million dollars or so (the price hasn’t been shared). The Galactique is a minute repeater with cathedral gongs, cased in white gold and titanium, but with dial engraving and enameling, which alone requires more than 300 hours of work. Then there’s the automata component of it all.

The watch features four different types of enameling. The base of the dial is miniature-painted in orange, green, white, and blue (seven total colors). The sparkle of the stars and depth of the sun comes from paillonné enameling (a gold paillon is placed on the dial then covered in enamel). The astronaut and flag feature champlevé enameling while the more monotone lunar surface is done in grisaille enamel.

The dial activates when the slide is used, so both the minute repeater and automaton work in tandem. When you activate the chime, the astronaut starts to move, raising and lowering his right arm to plant the LV flag into the moon’s surface while his left arm counterbalances and creates a weightless effect. At the same time, the satellite’s antenna, solar panels, and thruster come to life. Finally, the shooting stars oscillate as the Sun turns, all at different rotational speeds. For some reason, it struck me as very “MTV-esque” with the pop culture-meets-high craft design. 

The use of brushed titanium for the case adds a bit of grey-ish industrial quality that matches the space industry vibe, but the movement is far from industrial. The watch is powered by the brand-new LFT AU14.02 movement, which takes 220 hours of work to assemble the 459 components for a caliber with a 100-hour power reserve and powering seven animations of the automaton. Unsurprisingly, the brand has put a lot of effort into the movement finishing, but combines Côtes de Genève with brushed and frosted plates that add to the elevated industrial-referencing design.

The case measures 46.7mm by 14.6mm, but with the turned-down lugs and lighter titanium case, I actually found this to be the more comfortable of the two. Louis Vuitton didn’t tell us the price officially (at least, it’s not listed on the website like the Bushido), but the price I saw was in excess of $1 million.

Escales Autour du Monde ‘Escale en Amazonie’ Pocket Watch

The least practical of all the already impractical automata watches is also my favorite and (in my opinion) most impressive. The Escales Autour du Monde’s series is brand new for the brand – pocket watches were previously only made by Louis Vuitton on special request. The theme here is to highlight exploration “in style” and is centered on Louis Vuitton’s trunkmaking heritage and savoir-faire, so you’ll see the miniature engraved trunks on the dial. But there’s so much more going on than just some advertising within a multi-million-dollar watch.

The pocket watch measures 50mm by 19mm, cased in white gold with engravings on the side that reference both the dial and the brand’s history of trunk making. The bezel is set with 60 baguette-cut precious stones and colored stones totaling 3.85 carats (31 emerald stones, 13 tsavorite stones, 11 tourmaline stones and 5 yellow sapphire case) placed in a gradient that reflects the colors of enamel shown on the dial background.

The brand says that this watch pushed the boundaries of their La Fabrique des Arts team (and the movement did the same for La Fabrique des Movements, but I’ll get there shortly), and it’s easy to see why. The “front” of the watch is solely for the automaton functions, with no time shown (though there are hands on the movement side). Depth and scale are achieved with a lot of engraving work, from the monkey, snake, and scarlet macaws that sit on top of the backdrop rendered with bas-relief engraving. The snake is not even 1cm long and features hundreds of scales engraved into the body. The macaws have feathers. It all took 140 hours of engraving for the dial pieces and another 60 hours for the case.

The brand used miniature enamel and paillonné enamel on the background with 31 colors. For those that don’t know, some enamel is a finite resource and is so rare that once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. The choice to use so many enamel colors adds an intensity and vibrancy to the watch that is rarely seen in modern watchmaking. Yes, the LV monogram marks in the yellow/green water might be a little on the nose here, but I can overlook them for the pure craft of it all. Just look at that log. It looks so realistic.

The functions of the automaton start with the trunks, which open revealing gold LV monogram flowers which catch the eye of the animals on the dial and cause them to move: the parrots cock their heads, the snake swings its head and tail, and the monkey looks on. All the while, the white gold compass rose at the top spins.

But then there’s the movement, it is just absurdly good. This is the LFT AU14.03 caliber movement with tourbillon and minute repeater and is the most complex mechanical movement ever created by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton to date.

The shape of the bridges immediately recalls historic vintage pocket watches, with the two fingers holding the tourbillon and the next gear in the train flowing neatly into the next bridge for the central pinion and other gearing. The hand-blued skeletonized hands are reasonably legible, all things considered, but I don’t think that’s the main point here. The movement has 555 components, including the automata module for the moving elements on the dial.

One watchmaker is responsible for assembling and finishing the watch, and it’s a tour de force, taking over 500 hours to complete. There are a total of 646 inner angles on the watch, including the teeth on the wheels. There’s copious black polishing, and a tremendous amount of depth to it all. Part of that comes from the thickness of some of the wheels. The ratchet itself was sculpted into a concave shape, which took three weeks to finish alone. For the first time, the prongs for the ruby settings are in yellow gold, while the wheels connecting the tourbillon are in solid gold. The pocket watch has an 8-day power reserve and, somewhat surprisingly, is water-resistant to 30 meters.

When we asked about miniaturizing the watch, Arnault mentioned the wheels in particular as a challenge. The wheels here are 0.8mm thick, which would be impossible to shrink while keeping high-end finishing. But even with the layout of the movement and slightly decreased finishing, it would make for a spectacular watch.

If you’re looking to buy, there are two things to know: the price and the fact that you’re already too late. Sources say the price was €3 million, but the watch was sold during client previews, reportedly to a female client who hoped to commission a necklace so she could wear the watch around her neck.

For more information visit Louis Vuitton.

​Hodinkee 

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