Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre celebrates the opening of the New York iteration of its Reverso 1931 Café this month. Located on a sublime mezzanine ground of the home’s jewel-box boutique on Madison Avenue, the artwork deco-inspired area is accomplished by an beautiful array of confections created by Parisian pastry chef Nina Métayer, every impressed by Jaeger-LeCoultre’s horological experience, which is most recognisable in its iconic Reverso design.
The café’s arrival in New York additionally coincides with the disclosing of a collaboration with the Spanish-born, Brooklyn-based graphic designer Alex Trochut. Trochut has created a brand new ‘1931 Alphabet’, which pulls stylistically from the artwork deco custom however boasts a up to date robustness and sculptural high quality that brings a recent modernity to Jaeger-Le Coultre’s visible id.
(Picture credit score: Jaeger-LeCoultre)
The home’s partnership with Trochut is the newest in its ‘Manufactured from Makers’ programme, which CEO Catherine Rénier describes as a approach of ‘on the lookout for totally different views on how the practices of watchmaking, artwork and different inventive disciplines can deliver worth and emotion to lived experiences’, she says. ‘[The series] is a profound expression of the core rules which have all the time outlined La Grande Maison: ardour, creativity, experience and precision, with intense respect for the particular person within the course of – the creativity of the thoughts and the ability of the hand.’
Targeted on worldwide artists who share a sensibility with Jaeger-LeCoultre, the sequence represents a powerful number of surprising types, supplies and media. Rénier continues, ‘We select to work with forward-thinking artists and extremely imaginative artisans whose work challenges our senses, expands our minds and triggers sturdy feelings. We assist them by commissioning new work and so they in flip nourish the creativity and persevering with evolution of our maison.’
(Picture credit score: Jaeger-LeCoultre)
That is notably poignant within the lettering that Trochut created. Armed with a visible depth that conveys a way of dynamism and motion, Trochut’s ‘1931 Alphabet’ is as expressive within the two-dimensional type as it’s as a three-dimensional object.
‘As I began creating the designs, an idea emerged that might unify artwork deco and Jaeger-LeCoultre’s craft of watchmaking,’ he remembers. ’The letters evoked some form of mechanism, full of various modular elements that work collectively to create an entire. I wished these letters to really feel bodily and expose their intricate elements equally as purposeful and ornamental, giving the sense of a transferring machine.’
‘I feel craft and technical expertise are on the coronary heart of each typography and watchmaking,’ he provides. ‘Letters are a mixture of emotional and rational selections, with an enormous inside logic that ties all the selections into one alphabet or lettering type, like a puzzle. Whereas I take into account watchmaking to be one other stage of complexity, each disciplines embody a devotion to the little issues, which have to work in concord inside a system.’
jaeger-lecoultre.com
Supply: Wallpaper
