Louis Vuitton’s La Fabrique du Temps watchmaking facility is the embodiment of the brand’s mission to maintain centuries-old horological art, craft and engineering skills while applying them to startlingly modern timepieces.
Nowhere is this intersection between the old and modern better presented than in a new Tambour Taiko Galactique, a minute repeater with classical cathedral gongs and a dial animation depicting an astronaut carrying an LV flag space-walking around a Louis Vuitton-branded satellite.
Gazing into the watch’s dial you see the world viewed over what looks like the horizon of the moon with a red and golden sun illuminating the whole vista.
Each dial is created by hand by LFT’s metier d’art team of painters, enamellers and engravers.
“The Tambour Galactique embodies a resolutely modern journey, where the DNA of Louis Vuitton – to constantly push the limits – reaches its pinnacle. This quest for excellence is evident both in the design and development of the watch movement and in the aesthetic approach to artisanal know-how, which we wish to both perpetuate and project into the future,” says Matthieu Hegi, artistic director of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton.
The Galactique requires an entirely new in house movement, the manually wound LFT AU14.02, which has 459 components and takes 220 hours to assemble.
Although the movement is only driving time-only hour and minute hands on the dial, it also controls seven animations for the interstellar scene and carries the minute repeater mechanics that can be set to sound hours, quarter hours, and minutes on demand.
Once every complication and animation is set in motion, the watch will show the astronaut floating through space on a path to planting his LV flag on the moon’s surface while the satellite’s antenna, solar panel and thruster come to life.
In the background, shooting stars twinkle and the sun slowly rotates.
All that animation is achieved through wheels and gears rotating at different speeds, a huge technical challenge for master watchmaker Nichel Navas and his team.
“Animating the astronaut in space realistically was the biggest challenge of the Tambour Taiko Galactique,” he says. “His right arm slowly waving the LV flag, while his left arm provides a counterweight, creates a striking weightless effect. This lack of a point of support, while contributing to the realism of the scene, has severely tested the ingenuity of our teams of engineers and watchmakers.“
Keeping the size of the watch down a reasonably wearable 46.7mm diameter and 14.6mm thickness was handled at La Fabrique du Temp, but the titanium case with integrated lugs was made at its sister site, the Fabrique des Boîtes Louis Vuitton.
Four enamelling and other artisan techniques were used on the dial to bring realistic details and textures to the dial’s moon, earth, sun and stars including including grand feu enamel, paillonné enamel, miniature enamel, sculpture and engraving.
The astronaut and satellite were sculpted by LFT’s master engraver with both a sense of weightlessness and volume before being enamelled.
The watch is sold on a blue rubber strap. Price is on application.