SJX Watches
Hands-On: Hermès Arceau L’Heure De La Lune
Hermès, as a brand, usually has an elegant, light and sometimes whimsical house style that makes it unique amongst luxury houses. The Arceau L’Heure De La Lune unveiled at SIHH at the start of the year exemplifies the house style, although the case is thicker than ideal. Functionally, the Arceau L’Heure De La Lune is a straightforward watch – it shows the time, date and phases of the Moon in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres. But the execution of the time and date is striking and clever. Orbital moon phases The two are essentially orbital displays, as each is on a sub-dial mounted on a rotating, central carousel. The carousel take 59 days to make one complete revolution around the dial. But each sub-dial also rotates on itself as the carousel turns. As a result, each sub-dial is always the right way up regardless of its position. Both sub-dials also double up as the moon phase indicator, with position of each sub-dial indicating the age of the Moon in each hemisphere. And in a bit of whimsy, the hemispheres have been inverted, with the Southern on top and Northern below. The Arceau L’Heure De La Lune with a meteorite dial The inventive display was built by Chronode, the complications specialist founded by Jean-Francois Mojon, which has a diverse body of work that includes Urban Jurgensen’s P4 movement, the MB&F; LM2, and the constant force tourbillon of IWC. The display module by Chronode. Photo – Hermes Chronode conceived and builds the ...
