BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
In some of its press releases Jaeger-LeCoultre refers to itself as “La Grande Maison” and I know that sounds a bit poncey and pretentious, but when you think about the range of horological feats they’ve achieved over the centuries, I think they’ve earned that title. Take this, the new Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 featuring a celestial appearance, a “Cosmotourbillon” and a minute repeater. It’s a bit of a thing of beauty, isn’t it?
The Calibre 945 was originally introduced by Jaeger-LeCoultre in 2010. Very early on in my days of writing about watches I did a hands-on of a watch featuring the Calibre 945, that watch was a diamond-bezelled version called the Master Grande Tradition Grande Complication ref JLQ5023402. At the time that was the most valuable watch I’d seen and held in person, even to this day it’s probably still up there. Despite the Calibre 945’s age, Jaeger-LeCoultre is doing a lot more than simply recycling an old movement they’ve had sitting around in a drawer for some time. The movement looks very different in its new home within the new Master Hybris Artistica.
The dial is, well, it’s probably as close to “insane” as we can write on a publication without being told our writing is sloppy. A golden-coloured lattice structure provides the base for the centre of the dial, Jaeger-LeCoultre calls this structure “Atomium”. 117 connected spheres are aligned to evoke the constellations which are displayed on the Hemisphere chart at the dial’s centre. The stars are organised as they appear over the Vallée de Joux, where Jaeger-LeCoultre originates from, and it tracks the movement of the constellations in real time.
This central arrangement on the dial forms a part of the “Cosmotourbillon”. Depending on the magic of publication schedules, you may be familiar with me recently talking about having difficulty finding out more information on Jaeger-LeCoultre’s “Universal tourbillon”, unless this article is published first, in which case you have that to look forward to. Anyway, the same can be said of the “Cosmotourbillon”, in that there isn’t much info on it. The “Cosmotourbillon” part refers to the flying tourbillon which rotates on its own axis and also rotates the central dial structure anticlockwise at a rate of 1 rotation per 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds (a sidereal day), but there’s no evidence it’s more accurate than any other kind of tourbillon. Whether or not you care about that is another story.
The balance wheel beats at a rate of 4Hz for 40 hours unless you fiddle with the Calibre 945’s other party piece, the minute repeater, which chimes out the hours, quarter hours and minutes when activated. All of this is on view through an open caseback, revealing the high-end finishing we all expect from a brand of this calibre (pun intended).
A chunky 45.00mm x 16.05mm 18k pink gold case surrounds the movement. Jaeger-LeCoultre says that the case is made from over 80 parts. I really like the modern look they went for with this case style, using lots of different finishes really makes the case stand out as one would expect, yet it still has 50m of water resistance.
I know I will never see one of these watches in person, ever, as they’re only making five of them. Yet I’m still glad that they exist, and that Jaeger-LeCoultre is continuing to push the boat out when it comes to both design and mechanical engineering. The price for one of these is just above EUR670,000 assuming they’ve not all sold, which they almost certainly have.
