Nestled away amongst deep red hearts, gold thorns and shiny green leaves, Louis Vuitton reveals its latest innovative timepiece for women: the amorous Tambour Fiery Heart Automata. With its sparkling diamond-set crown and spinning tourbillon, the automaton timepiece certainly shows Louis Vuitton’s La Fabrique du Temps artisanal and watchmaking abilities at their absolute finest.
For the dial of this all-important novelty, which follows on from the award-winning Tambour Carpe Diem Automata, Louis Vuitton masters the ultimate artisanal craft: grand feu enamel. This marks the introduction of the fast-developing high-watchmaking department’s first in-house enamel dial. Notoriously hard to work with, grand feu enamel involves high temperatures and numerous breakages in the manufacturing process. Nevertheless, it remains a material that yields excellent results: chiefly, unmistakably intense and durable colours.
Credit © Régis Golay
For this new model, the manufacture goes for green, using a combination of champlevé and cloisonné enamel to create the various miniature elements on this romantic dial. While champlevé enamel involves removing material from the dial surface, creating space in which the enamel powder can be deposited, cloisonné requires the expert application of thin gold wires by hand. The manufacture’s master enameller fixes these wire shapes onto the dial surface, creating closed cells in which he/she can deposit the enamel.
Powering this new creation from La Fabrique du Temps is the in-house calibre LFT 325. Naturally, the movement was conceived specifically for this highly artistic watch, which is housed in a polished 42 mm pink-gold Tambour case.
Credit © Régis Golay
Three years in the making at Louis Vuitton’s high-watchmaking atelier, the automatic calibre LFT 325 is subtly finished to perfection. Visible via the sapphire crystal caseback, this movement features micro-blasted bridges that are decorated with thorny rose stems in pink-gold, evoking the motif present on the dial. Open-worked sections expose the wheels, while the glowing 18-carat pink-gold rotor is also engraved and open-worked with the brand’s hallmark monogram flowers.
Owners of this rare new horological wonder from La Fabrique du Temps can view a glimpse of the automaton via the caseback, too. In the upper right quadrant of the movement, an open-worked bridge allows a view of the automaton mainspring, driving wheels and regulator. This complex assembly feeds energy to the seven automata, coordinating their running times and controlling the speed at which they operate.
Credit © Ulysse Frechelin
As mentioned, this new automaton watch features no less than seven animations, which are spurred into action by a gem-set pusher at 8 o’clock. With the mechanical performance lasting precisely 13 seconds, wearers can observe the action on the thorns, monogram flowers, the heart, and gold flames.
While the thorns emerge and extend from the hour and minutes subdial, the two enamel roses’ monograph flowers at the centre spin around rapidly. Meanwhile, the flames around the blazing heart dance as though a strong wind is fanning them, before the heart itself cracks open and reveals the words: ‘Sweet but fierce’. It’s every bit a women’s watch, from the beautiful aesthetics and confident messaging to the imaginative innovations of the automaton.
Notably, the Tambour Fiery Heart Automata marks the first time that Louis Vuitton’s high watchmaking department has combined a flying tourbillon with an automatic movement with a dial-side automata. As a separate mainspring drives the automaton, the flying tourbillon with one-minute rotation is able to maintain high levels of chronometric performance throughout the 65 hours of the LFT 325’s power reserve. The complex calibre LFT 325 has a solid frequency of 4 Hz.
Credit © Ulysse Frechelin
Last but not least, the Louis Vuitton Tambour Fiery Heart Automata comes on a green alligator strap, which secures with a pink-gold buckle matching to the case. The price of the watch is 420,000 euros.
