Time today resides in the lock screens of smartphones, but for the humans who came aeons before us, time lived within the stars. The first recorded method of time telling came in the form of sundials, which tracked the sun’s movements using the shadows cast by an obelisk. Later, the appearance of specific constellations in the night sky during different times of the year helped Egyptians track the seasons and years. It’s romantic to carry this perspective into the timepieces we wear today. In this sense, I like to think that celestial forces have always dwelled within the crevices of every watch’s movement, silently powering the evolution of time.
Jaeger-LeCoultre just released two watches that embody this very idea, under two of its most revered collections: Hybris Artistica and Grande Tradition.
To give you a refresher, the Grande Tradition is home to the brand’s grand complications—tourbillons, repeaters, perpetual calendars, the works. These watches lean heavily towards classical codes in order to flaunt their high complications, rather than pursue artistic experimentation. Under this line comes a new iteration of the Master Grande Tradition Calibre 948, which quite literally channels the world onto its dial.
The Hybris Artistica collection, on the other hand, represents the pinnacle of the Maison’s technical mastery, decorative crafts, and hand-crafted skill. Think of it as a separate division within the brand—away from the reversos and masters—where they can fulfil its most creatively ambitious creations. The latest addition, the Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945, looks to the cosmos for inspiration.
Both watches arrive with the creative savoir-faire and horological expertise promised by their respective collections. But they also arrive with a unifying theme which ties both of them closely together—astronomy. We’ll start with dissecting the former first, since breaking down both simultaneously will only leave us both in a daze. Yes, these watches are as intricate as they look.
We begin with the most eye-catching part of the watch, its dial. The Northern Hemisphere of the globe is transposed onto the wrist, with strands of pink gold demarcating each continent. Champlevé (an enamelling technique which translates to ‘raised field’) is applied to carve out depressions in the surface, creating the continental plains. These hollow parts are then filled with multiple layers of enamel to replicate topographical complexity and tease visual interest. Of which, opaque and translucent enamels are used to express the different landscapes of the continents.
Beneath the golden global grid lies a wavy hand-guilloché pattern coated with 15 layers of blue translucent lacquer to represent the ocean. Once every component is pieced together, which takes around 70 hours of painstaking handcraft, you’re left with an imperfectly perfect dial that replicates the wonder of earth with incredible depth and richness.
With a dial this impressive, you’ll need grand complications to match. The self-winding Calibre 948, with its 48-hour power reserve, does exactly that. It hosts a 24-hour worldtimer and Jaeger-LeCoultre’s patented universal flying tourbillon. If the latter sounds unfamiliar, you’re forgiven, as it’s a concept unique to the Maison.
Beyond performing its usual task of ironing out gravity’s effect on timekeeping accuracy with a hypnotic swing, this tourbillon fuses the world-time function with a flying construction. True to its name, the tourbillon flies around the dial, taking its cues from the sun. It makes a full circular circuit every 24 hours, which corresponds to the Earth’s rotation on its axis orbiting around the Sun. But it’s not just the tourbillon, it’s the entire dial—the world map, ocean, and outer city rings—all of it rotates with it, reproducing the slow crawl of the earth on the wrist.
As for the world timer, it's refreshingly direct. The 24-hour ring is lodged permanently between the bezel and city ring, so even as the dial rotates, the time in every zone remains decipherable. Everything is adjusted through the crown, which automatically synchronises the time of all the cities shown on the ring once the time is properly adjusted and set. When travelling, simply set the local time to the desired time zone, and the hour hand will jump accordingly, leaving the minute hands untouched.
When the Master Grande Tradition Calibre 948 first debuted years ago, it was the first watch to unite a world timer display and flying tourbillon.
Today, its succeeding iterations have remained mostly unchanged. What’s new here in the latest reference is the renewed enamel dial with greater depth, and the material of the case. At 43mm, pink gold is used to craft the case, embracing the globe with a warm lustre. A dark blue alligator strap accompanies the watch, a well-complemented to the deep ocean tones that permeate the dial.
If the Master Grande Tradition Calibre 948 looks to the sun, then the Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 looks to the stars. The defining feature of the watch sits at 6 o’clock: a 60-second flying tourbillon, which, much like its Grande Collection counterpart, makes a complete, anti-clockwise circuit around the dial. Instead of the sun, however, the “cosmotourbillon” rotates according to the Earth’s rotation measured in relation to fixed stars. Astrologists call this a sidereal day, which lasts 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.
Jaeger-LeCoultre takes astronomical timekeeping a step further with a celestial display right smack in the centre of the dial. Every constellation worth observing is hand-decorated onto the dark blue Grand Feu enamel sky chart, which moves in tandem with the tourbillon once every sidereal day. This reproduces the precise positions of constellations as they unfold in real time, creating a visceral, almost poetic alternative to keeping up with the stars, as opposed to the numerical readings of conventional calendars. This is indicated by a golden-coloured sun-shaped pointer on the rim of the rotating dial, which also performs a full revolution around the dial to indicate 24-hour time.
Naturally, all this astrological data has to be charted from somewhere (sublime) on Earth. The watch maps the Northern Hemisphere night sky from the home of Jaeger-LeCoultre in Switzerland, Vallée de Joux, the same place bearing the roots of the Maison since the 16th century.
If you thought we were done discussing complications, you’d be sorely mistaken. Flip the watch over, and you’ll see the manually winding Calibre 945 in all of its kinetic glory. But nestled within all those balance wheels and rotors powering its 40-hour power reserve is a minute repeater. Through several patented innovations, including cathedral crystal gongs, trébuchet hammers, and a silent governor, a crisp acoustic sound is achieved. This serves as a continued pursuit of the Maison to perfect the sound of its mechanisms with resonant clarity.
For a watch already laden with astronomical complications to also house a minute repeater is impressive to say the least. The repeater is, after all, one of the most challenging mechanisms in watchmaking to design, assemble, and tune. It’s no surprise, then, that the watch comes in at a hefty 45mm and 16.05mm thick. And with a pink-gold case, every swing of the wrist reminds you of the craftsmanship accounted for in every gram.
Now flip the watch back to the front and take in the dial. This latest iteration of the Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 pushes the Maison’s Métiers Rares atelier to its limits. The dome-shaped dial unfolds across three levels: the Cosmotourbillon, the sky chart, and an intricate filigreed structure composed of 117 interconnected spheres, evoking a celestial web. The lace-like framework is rendered in gold—light rather than solid—to reduce weight, a crucial choice given how much energy is required to rotate the dial. It wraps around the cosmotourbillon and sky chart in a shimmering lattice, forming a backdrop that honours the grand celestial forces that have always, in their quiet way, shaped how we tell time.
The Master Grande Tradition Calibre 948 and Master Hybris Artistica Calibre 945 are limited to 20 and 5 pieces, respectively
