As we've mentioned before, Jaquet Droz is a watch manufacture well known for their impressive 'Grand Feu' a.k.a. fired enamel dials with some of the most beautiful designs in the horological world. These dials embody the essence and fine watchmaking values of this manufacture. The Jaquet Droz Petite Heure Minute American Eagle is a limited edition timepiece with a striking 'Grand Feu' enamel dial featuring the iconic American bald eagle flying over a city skyline. This is as American as a Swiss made 'haute horlogerie' piece gets. One great thing about the fired enamel dials on the Petite Heure Minute timepieces is that the lack of a seconds register provides the perfect layout to decorate the bottom part of the dial with any motif or design. For those that don't know the difference between enamel dials and 'Grand Feu' —fired enamel dials— we'll explain it now. A regular enamel dial, sometimes referred to as an 'enamel lacquered dial', is a dial that has been painted with a shiny paint that hardens as it dries out.
Baselworld 2015: Introducing the Jaquet Droz Petite Heure Minute Butterfly Journey. Live Pictures and Pricing.
For Baselworld 2015, Jaquet Droz presents The Butterfly Journey, an homage to beauty and nature in two series of eight timepieces. The fruit of the Atelier d'Art's unique expertise, twin sets of Petite Heure Minute models are dedicated to the elegance of the butterfly, that fragile, romantic creature embodying the beauty of time. An angel passes, drawn along by a butterfly, and time seems to hold its breath in a moment of pure poetry. This motif, discovered in an old book devoted to Jaquet Droz, has been depicted just once before, in the Age of Enlightenment, by one of the legendary automata created by Pierre Jaquet-Droz. In 2013, it was given pride of place on "The Loving Butterfly" a watch paying tribute to putti —sculptures of children used to decorate some of Italian architecture's most beautiful buildings as well as the cultural treasures of Renaissance and Baroque Europe.