How a Mechanical Songbird Takes Flight

Today, most particular results are created on computer systems. However within the 18th and nineteenth centuries, the automaton — an intricate mechanical gadget that would take the type of a preening silver swan or an organ-playing doll — was a well-liked supply of leisure and surprise. Now Van Cleef & Arpels is unveiling its newest tackle that custom: In his workshop among the many mountains of Sainte-Croix, Switzerland, François Junod, a craftsman in his mid-60s who has devoted his life to creating automatons, has been working for the previous two and a half years on Apparition des Baies, a showstopping new piece for the Paris-based jewellery home.

At almost 11 inches in peak, the bejeweled object is perhaps mistaken for a flamboyant kitchen egg timer. Two layered discs carved out of Dalmatian jasper help a pink-hued thulite bowl; the supplies had been chosen by the model’s gemologists and minimize and polished by lapidaries to deliver out their full character. Surrounding the highest stone is a rotating 12-hour clock. Above it sits a dome of 112 overlapping and intertwined lacquered rose-gold leaves. Wind up the machine, and the foliage unfurls to disclose a diamond-and-sapphire-encrusted songbird. A chime sounds a crystalline tune; the animal beats its wings. Moments later, the dome closes once more and the spectacle is over.

It took greater than a dozen artisans to develop the Apparition des Baies. Step one was to convene what Junod refers to as a “assume tank,” which included stone setters and engravers. Making certain that the automaton’s intricate mechanics might deal with the load of the dome’s heavy gold leaves, which had been created by hand and embellished with eight coats of paint by a lacquer artist, posed a selected problem. It was vital to Junod that the rotary system — a posh mixture of tubes, cogs and is derived — mimic the fluid actions present in nature. To attain his imaginative and prescient, Junod and his workforce experimented with many prototypes earlier than discovering an strategy that labored. “We’re reaching towards the not possible,” says Junod. “Magic, poetry — humanity wants that.”