Watches & Wonders Edit: Jaeger-LeCoultre looks to the stars for its 2022 theme, The Stellar Odyssey, unveiling a whole raft of new celestial watches

May 10 , 2022

Jaeger-LeCoultre’s celestial watches are a universe in miniature, highly complex yet also ethereally beautiful. Photos: Jaeger-LeCoultre

At Watches and Wonders 2022, Jaeger-LeCoultre reached for the stars. The venerable Swiss luxury watch manufacture used the leading horological show to announce its theme for 2022, The Stellar Odyssey, with a touring exhibition and a series of themed events to go with it. It celebrates Jaeger-LeCoultre’s long history of translating the mysteries of the stars into masterpieces of timekeeping, and also the broader link between the astronomical phenomena and the history of horology.

The new theme was presented at a keynote speech by Jaeger-LeCoultre CEO Catherine Rénier, accompanied by astronomer Didier Queloz, winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics, who is acting as the project’s partner and scientific adviser.

Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Master Grande Tradition Calibre 948.

Naturally, a whole raft of new celestial watches were also unveiled at the show to accompany the initiative. Among them is a beautiful new home for the Calibre 948 world time complication – the Master Grande Tradition Calibre 948 – which has received the attention of the artisans in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Métiers Rares atelier.

Many world time watches depict the globe on their dials, along with the traditional collection of names of major world cities around its edge; this one is unique in realising it as a dome that floats above the dial bed instead of a flat map. The landmasses of the northern hemisphere are picked out on the dial in white gold and decorated with champlevé enamel, while beneath it, the dial bed represents the sea with a disc of vivid blue translucent lacquer applied over a wavy guilloche pattern. The piece features a universal tourbillon that rotates every 60 seconds and makes a complete circumnavigation of the dial every 24 hours.

The new Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 Galaxia in rose gold.

First launched in 2010, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Calibre 945 is a horological marvel: an immensely complex movement that powers all sorts of stellar complications, including a sky chart, a celestial vault, a zodiacal calendar and a minute repeater.

At Watches and Wonders 2022, two head-turning new timepieces were unveiled with the calibre at their heart: the Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 Galaxia in pink gold and the Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 Atomium in white gold. Available in limited editions of five each, they feature dials that have been decorated in grisaille enamel by the Métiers Rares atelier, alongside a celestial flying tourbillon that moves around the dial once each sidereal day – meaning Earth’s rotation in relation to the stars rather than the sun.

The Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous Dazzling Shooting Star watch.

To create two more dazzling new watches – the Rendez-Vous Star and Rendez-Vous Dazzling Star – Jaeger-LeCoultre has built an entirely new complication that animates one of nature’s most spectacular sights, a shooting star.

The Calibre 734 that powers these pieces causes a shooting star to burst across the dial, apparently at random – typically four to six times per hour – plus when it’s activated by the wearer. The Rendez-Vous Star comes with either a white gold case and a dial in silvery blue, or a pink gold case and a dial in golden brown; while the Rendez-Vous Dazzling Star comes in a pink gold case with a diamond set bezel and a dial featuring multiple layers of blue Aventurine.

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Watches and Wonders Edit

Long fascinated by the heavens, the luxury watchmaker reached out for inspiration again, creating some of its most complicated watches ever, such as the Rendez-Vous Star
The limited-edition Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 Galaxia and Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 Atomium even feature dials that move with the stars