Above all others

Held annually in November, the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) awards ceremony honours outstanding creations in the watchmaking world. The 20 or so prizes include the most prestigious Aiguille d'Or Grand Prix (Best in Show).

This year IWC Schaffhausen won the Aiguille d'Or Grand Prix for its Portugieser Eternal Calendar at the 24th GPHG awards ceremony, which took place on Nov 13 at Théâtre du Léman in Geneva.

"We are thrilled to win this award for the Portugieser Eternal Calendar. Building on the emblematic crown-controlled perpetual calendar that Kurt Klaus developed in the 1980s, we have pushed the limits for mechanical calendar complications once again," said Christoph Grainger-Herr, CEO of IWC Schaffhausen.

Kurt Klaus, who turned 90 on Oct 26, worked at IWC for more than four decades.

The legendary watchmaker devised the user-friendly Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar Chronograph, which debuted at the Basel watch fair in 1985.

All of its displays could be advanced simply by turning the crown, a first in the industry. In addition to recognising the different lengths of the months, the mechanical programme automatically inserted a leap day every four years, thus working without any manual adjustments until the year 2100.

Klaus was also involved in the development of the Portugieser Perpetual Calendar with an enhanced moon phase accuracy of 577.5 years and the Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month, respectively launched in 2003 and 2009.

IWC built on this expertise and developed the Portugieser Eternal Calendar as its first secular perpetual calendar.

The award-winning timepiece is based on the same modular and synchronised design as IWC's perpetual calendar, meaning that all displays can be advanced simply by using the crown.

However, while the perpetual calendar is programmed for a four-year cycle with three regular years followed by a leap year, the Portugieser Eternal Calendar accounts for the Gregorian calendar's leap year exceptions.

A newly-engineered 400-year gear ensures that the secular perpetual calendar automatically skips three leap years over four centuries. This means it will calculate the leap year correctly until at least the year 3999.

Thanks to a newly-developed reduction gear train with three intermediate wheels, the Double Moon indication will theoretically only deviate from the lunar orbit by one day after 45,361,055 years.

"We have engineered more than just a concept. Despite its tremendous complexity, the Portugieser Eternal Calendar is a watch we are actually producing, and our customers are wearing every day," said IWC's CEO.

Housed in a platinum case, the Portugieser Eternal Calendar features box-glass sapphire crystals on the front and the back that showcase the transparent glass dial and the IWC-manufactured 52640 calibre.

"My thanks go to our teams in research and innovation, design and development, simulation and testing, and, of course, manufacturing. This watch would not have been possible without your passion and determination," he said.

IWC dates back to 1868, when Florentine Ariosto Jones established the International Watch Company in Schaffhausen in northeastern Switzerland.

The American watchmaker drew on Swiss horological expertise, modern technology and hydropower sourced from the River Rhine to manufacture high-quality pocket watches.

Today, with collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot's Watches, IWC covers the whole spectrum from elegant to sports watches.

Its Pilot's Watch Performance Chronograph 41 Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team and Big Pilot's Watch 43 Tourbillon Markus Bühler were also respectively nominated in the Sports and Iconic categories of the GPHG 2024 competition.

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Dazzling artistry, mechanical creativity

In 2020 and 2022, Van Cleef & Arpels took home two prizes at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève. This year the maison scored a hat trick.

Firstly, Lady Arpels Jour Enchanté, showcasing traditional and innovative enamelling techniques, won the Artistic Crafts Watch Prize at the GPHG 2024.

The Extraordinary Dials creation presents a hand-sculpted white gold fairy, whose wings feature transparent plique-à-jour enamel. White gold leaves with plique-à-jour enamel and diamonds harbour flowers centred by glowing yellow sapphires.

The newly-developed façonné enamel technique lends the blossoms high relief and an illusion of a flowerbed. Poured onto a stainless steel medium, the material is sculpted to produce a three-dimensional bloom. Induced tension is eliminated by low-temperature firing and the enamel is carefully glazed at high temperature. The entire process results in a smooth and luminous surface and a striking visual effect of volume and transparency.

Van Cleef & Arpels also developed a gemsetting technique within the enamel with no other metal components. After positioning each stone in an indentation finely carved in the enamel, re-firing to a precise temperature seals the composition while delivering a "floating" effect.

The time is indicated on the sun sparkling with spessartite garnets, coloured sapphires and diamonds. The sun rays are secured with another innovative lifted setting that makes the stones appear suspended like dewdrops.

The assembly of the extraordinary dial took two years of development and 180 hours of work, earning Van Cleef & Arpels the prestigious Artistic Crafts Watch Prize. The craftsmanship continues on the caseback through an engraved decor illustrating the fairy taking flight.

Enamelling also enhances the aesthetic of Lady Arpels Brise d'Été, which was awarded the Ladies' Complication Watch Prize for its mechanical creativity and complexity.

Two butterflies in plique-à-jour enamel come to life on demand, taking turns to indicate the time at noon and midnight. With a simple press of a button, they fly around the matte mother-of-pearl dial, passing swaying flowers set with spessartite garnets, leaves paved with tsavorite garnets and grass blades in plique-à-jour enamel.

The miniature painting involves applying colours -- a mixture of silica powder, finely ground pigments and oil -- to the plique-à-jour butterflies and vallonné enamel petals.

Each hue in the colour gradient requires its own firing procedure with the precise time and temperature known only to master enamellers.

The casebacks of the Lady Arpels Brise d'Été as well as the Lady Jour Nuit -- the recipient of the Ladies' Watch Prize -- boast an enamel decal on sapphire crystal.

For the latter, Van Cleef & Arpels developed the use of platinum for the fairy silhouette and the pointillism technique to impart a colour gradient on the sapphire crystal.

On the dial, a mother-of-pearl shroud painted in blue and adorned with a guilloché motif symbolises the horizon. A 24-hour rotating disc crafted from Murano aventurine glass shimmers as a blue background for diamond-set stars, diamond-paved moon and yellow gold guilloché sun.

While displaying only the time, the Lady Jour Nuit stands out with a mechanism that reflects the trajectories of the celestial bodies, as an expression of Van Cleef & Arpels' Poetry of Time.