Jaeger-LeCoultre's Latest High Jewellery Timepiece Conceals More than Just Time

Blending the craftsmanship of luxury timepieces with the artistry of fine jewellery, Jaeger-LeCoultre has expanded its Calibre 101 series with a platinum 950 version of the High Jewellery 101 Secrets watch (Ref. Q2873220). This model will have limited production, on demand only.

Essentially, secret watches, known as montres secrètes in French, are timepieces that successfully hide their dials; these are made to resemble bracelets, necklaces or other forms of jewellery. Secret watches conceal the timekeeping function behind decorative components like hinged covers, gemstone-encrusted patterns or intricate mechanics. To reveal the time, the wearer must open or adjust a portion of the watch, which serves both as a piece of jewellery and as a working timepiece.

Jaeger-LeCoultre’s new 101 Secrets – Platinum variant measures 29.07 mm x 12.22 mm and is crafted from platinum 950. The time-only piece gets a mother-of-pearl dial with blue hands for hours and minutes. The bracelet gets 1,028 brilliant-cut diamonds, totalling 26.21 ct. Each stone is precisely positioned using two different setting techniques: a double row of grain-set diamonds edged with two outer rows of griffe-set diamonds. Jaeger-LeCoultre conceals not one but two aspects within the watch: the first is the dial itself, which must be exposed to view the time, and the second is the mechanism that activates the dial cover.

The design of the watch's concealed elements has of course increased the complexity. It took the craftsmen 182 hours to complete just the gem-setting task. The secret mechanism that shows the dial had to be so small that it could be fully hidden inside the rows of diamonds, with only the wearer knowing its location and activating it with a diamond button. When the diamond is held down, a little part of the bracelet opens up like a book's pages, revealing the time. When the button is released, the dial dissolves back into the flow of diamonds. A tiny, hidden mechanism had to be devised for the clasp that holds the bracelet to the wrist.

Powering the watch is Calibre 101, the world's smallest mechanical movement. With 98 components, the entire manually-wound movement measures just 14 mm x 4.8 mm, with a thickness of 3.4 mm; it weighs just one gram. Despite its minuscule size, the watch provides a power reserve of 33 hours. It took 40 hours to hand-assemble the miniature movement.

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