Cartier has a long and distinguished history as a watchmaker of dabbling outside the confines of the traditional round watch case, at times with iconic results such as the emblematic Tank and Santos models. At the upcoming SIHH watch salon in Geneva, the French master jeweler and watch design pioneer revives another early 20th-century shaped model that went on to become hugely influential, its 1906 Tonneau, in the new Cartier Privé line.
Cartier Prive? Collection
The Cartier Privé collection kicks off with two versions, one a classically elegant two-handed timekeeper, the other a skeletonized dual-time piece. Hearkening back to the original 1906 watch ? which was cased in platinum rather than more common gold and featured wrist-hugging curves and vis armurier (or “gunsmith”-style) tube screws to fasten the lugs ? the Privé case is double bracketed, with an oblong, curved shape engineered to follow the contours of the wrist. The bezel of the two-hand Tonneau model is formed from a single block of either rose gold or platinum and boasts, according to Cartier, “no overhangs or breaks in the plane” of its surface. The winding crown is topped off with a cabochon in classic Cartier style. The dial ? Champagne-colored on the rose-gold watch, silvered on the platinum ? features polished, rhodium-plated applied Roman numerals and a vintage-style railtrack minutes scale. Both versions of the Tonneau have alligator leather straps, gray with the platinum, bro...