Tick-tock – we all want a clock

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LVMH announced that it had acquired Swiza, the owner of Swiss horology brand L’Épée 1839, at the end of June. The statement contained the usual corporate blandishments: it was a “jewel in the crown of haute horlogerie”, there was a “determination to preserve and develop historic savoir-faire”. What made it unusual was that the manufacturer in question is not a watch brand but a clockmaker. When the luxury world’s apex predator snaps up a clock factory, clearly something is going on.

Clocks are not exactly new, but the way L’Épée does them is. Forget traditional carriage clocks, cuckoo clocks and grandfather clocks; think instead of ones in the shape of revolvers, aeroplanes, racing cars, sculling boats, vintage cars and hand grenades. L’Épée collaborates with the avant-garde watchmaker MB&F on clocks that look like giant spiders, while with Ulysse Nardin it created the buoy-shaped UFO (Unidentified Floating Object). It also carries out work for big-name brands beyond niche watchmaking, including Chanel.

L’Épée 1839 x L’Ecal Time Flies, about £26,980

L’Épée 1839 Time Fast Chrome, about £26,980

“We see a potential with this knowhow applied to different universes of our brands,” says Frédéric Arnault who, as head of LVMH’s watch and jewellery division, was behind the acquisition. The potential of which he speaks can already be seen in such pieces as a New York City taxi in Tiffany blue and the Louis Vuitton Montgolfière Aéro, a time-only hot-air balloon with an LV trunk as the basket (there’s also a limited-edition diamond-set version).

Big Luxury’s interest in clocks extends well beyond LVMH. Some of the first stirrings of the 21st-century grand luxe clock revival were felt around 2017 when Nicolas Bos, then president of Van Cleef & Arpels and now CEO of Richemont, revitalised the tradition of the automaton. It had taken seven years working with François Junod, a maker of automata based in the Swiss Jura, to create the first “Extraordinary Object”: the Fée Ondine, a one-off kinetic sculpture of a gem-set white-gold fairy awakening on a rippling lily pad, quite overshadowing the clock in its base.

In time Fée Ondine itself was overshadowed by later masterpieces including the Fontaine aux Oiseaux, featuring two gem-encrusted gold birds moving their heads, flapping their wings and walking around the edge of a pond. It won its class at the 2022 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, which was the first year to feature a category for mechanical clocks; it also heralded the launch of a series of simpler, smaller but still precious clocks, each featuring the blooming of fantastical flowers.

Van Cleef & Arpels’ Fontaine aux Oiseaux, winner at the 2022 GPHG

Vulcain steel Table O’Clock, £1,100

Under Bos, Van Cleef became known for its resuscitation of historical decorative techniques, creating watches with a narrative. “What was exciting and also frustrating is that we had to do that within the size of a watch,” he says. Clocks offered a larger canvas, creating “mechanisms that are not necessarily only telling the time, but trying to tell a story”. The stories have attracted “a lot of collectors and watch lovers”, he adds. “I don’t know if they have everything, but they have already explored what can be explored with watches. We now see that there is an interest for different sizes and different stories.”

The desk clock business is really going to thrive

“Storytelling” has been cheapened by overuse in marketing departments, but narrative is central to this revival. “The inspiration really comes from Gabrielle Chanel, her apartment, her universe”, says Chanel’s president of watches and fine jewellery, Frédéric Grangié, of a musical clock featuring a quintet of dancing Stockman mannequins that move up and down, while rotating on a carousel to Al Bowlly’s “My Woman”. Time indication may be a distant third to the music and motion, but it is no afterthought, and is read off a scale that looks like a tape measure.

Grangié suggests that the new interest in clocks might, among other things, be “coming from the fact that it’s becoming unsafe to walk around with great watches or jewellery. People want to be surrounded by objects they love. Most of our clients are women, so we will see these objects in dressing rooms, in bedrooms, as part of the most intimate universe they live in.” Although priced over €2mn, the Chanel clock sold quickly. 

Patek Philippe The Muses dome clock, POA

Patek Philippe Complicated Desk Clock, sold for about £8.4mn at OnlyWatch in 2021

“When I look at the clock business it is really two segments,” Grangié says. “One, typically in our case, will be focusing on limited-edition and very high-end clocks. The other, which is really going to thrive, is the desk clock business.” This is welcome news for Jaeger-LeCoultre, whose Atmos clock, powered by changes in atmospheric temperature, has been in production since the 1930s. Between 2010 and 2016 it was contemporised by Marc Newson. The designer is now working on another JLC classic, an eight-day desk clock.

Still, the term “desk clock” can be misleading, inasmuch as one of the most expensive timepieces of any sort in recent years is a desk clock. Made by Patek Philippe, inspired by one owned by gilded-age plutocrat James Ward Packard, it fetched SFr9.5mn (about £8.4mn) at auction in 2021. Meanwhile, the brand’s once-overlooked Dome clocks, enriched with rare handcrafts, are now highly sought after by collectors of the brand’s watches.

It’s not just the most established names that are entering the market. This August, Vulcain, relaunched by Guillaume Laidet, unveiled a new and accessibly priced desk clock with three quartz movements based on a historic public clock at what is now the TWA Hotel at JFK airport. “I thought it was a super-cool design,” says Laidet, “and a good way to diversify the business.”

It is this prospect of diversification that makes L’Épée’s acquisition by LVMH so fascinating. Can we expect to see clocks in champagne and brandy bottles, honouring Moët & Chandon and Hennessy? Set in the heels of Berluti shoes, or coddled in cashmere by Loro Piana? The possibilities are boundless.