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Van Cleef & Arpels is renowned for its exquisite craftsmanship and luxurious designs in the world of watchmaking. The brand combines artistic creativity with technical precision to create timepieces that are both elegant and timeless.
Van Cleef & Arpels is a French luxury jewellery and watch house founded in Paris in 1906, part of the Richemont Group. In watches, the brand is celebrated for its Poetic Complications — a series of watches that use miniature automata and jewellery techniques to create animated displays of fairy-tale and literary scenes. Van Cleef & Arpels bridges high jewellery and haute horlogerie in a way that is genuinely unique among luxury brands.
The Lady Arpels Jour Nuit is a time display divided between day and night using rotating discs and a sun/moon motif in gold and gemstones. The Midnight Poetic Wish series features fairy figures and stars in three-dimensional arrangements that animate as the watch runs. The Pont des Amoureux shows two lovers meeting on a bridge as the hours change. All Poetic Complications involve months of hand-crafting by specialist miniature jewellery ateliers. The Alhambra, with its four-leaf clover motif, is the brand's signature jewellery line.
Van Cleef & Arpels approaches watchmaking as an extension of jewellery — the movement is a means to animate the jewellery composition rather than the primary focus. The brand employs gem-setters, miniature painters, feather workers, and automata specialists alongside traditional watchmakers. This distinguishes VC&A from watches that merely add gemstones to a conventional watch design. The result is objects that appeal equally to jewellery collectors and watch collectors interested in the decorative arts tradition within horology.