WATCHES AND WONDERS 2022

Jaeger-LeCoultre is delighted to welcome you to Watches and Wonders Geneva to celebrate the links between cosmic phenomena, the origins of timekeeping and horological innovation.

Please join Catherine Renier, Jaeger-LeCoultre CEO, to embark on a Stellar Odyssey, tracing the story of time and unveiling Jaeger-LeCoultre’s newest celestially inspired timepieces.

The stars have always fascinated mankind, appearing in the night sky at different times and places, depending on where Earth is in its orbit around the Sun. Because it is innately human to recognise patterns, early civilisations identified and named groups of stars – the constellations. The watchmakers of La Grande Maison have developed a mechanism that displays the position of the constellations in real time, as seen from the Vallée de Joux. 

Unpredictable, ephemeral and mysterious, shooting stars are surely the most romantic and intriguing of all the celestial phenomena. To capture the magic of this rare phenomenon, Jaeger-LeCoultre has invented an entirely new shooting star display. Conceived and produced entirely within the Manufacture, this new complication appears to defy the laws of watchmaking, reconciling a randomly occurring display with the mathematically precise rhythms that govern a mechanical watch movement. In keeping with the ephemeral beauty of shooting stars, the new complication has been created especially for the Rendez-Vous collection, where it is presented for the first time in 2022.

Born in 1928, the Atmos is a clock like no other. An invention that appears to defy the laws of physics, running for centuries without the need for any conventional energy source or rewinding. Instead, its mechanism is powered by normal, everyday fluctuations in air temperature; a variation of just one degree Celsius is sufficient to guarantee two days of running time, enabling it to run perpetually if kept under normal everyday conditions. Over time, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s watchmakers have continued to master the challenge of adding functions to the mechanism without substantially increasing energy consumption.

In doing so, they have discovered that the complications best suited to the Atmos are those based on longer cycles, such as the phases of the moon, months, seasons, years and beyond. With a strong aesthetic identity defined by its distinctive mechanism, the Atmos naturally lends itself to different design treatments and, in 2022, Jaeger-LeCoultre presents two new interpretations of this unique clock.

In 2022, Jaeger-LeCoultre introduces a perpetual calendar to the Polaris line for the first time, enriching the collection with one of horology’s most complex, useful and prized complications. A perpetual calendar is a miniature mechanical computer that always shows the correct date, automatically adjusting for the different duration of months and even the leap years.