One of the world’s most captivating minute repeaters gets new plumage.
A master of dressing up complicated mechanics in swathes of charm, Jaquet Droz returns with a new iteration of its Bird Repeater, the Fall of the Rhine.
This version closely follows the build of its 2012 predecessor, where the pusher at three o’clock activates the avian automatons, giving them eight distinct animations. The water flows, the feathers unfurl and the birds feed their fledglings as the egg appears to hatch. A slider at nine o’clock triggers the minute repeater, which you can see in action from the caseback. As expected from such a whimsical timepiece, the dial is completely painted and engraved by hand.
Bird automatons were much more prevalent (at least among 01 the affluent) in the 18th century, when the watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz was busying himself with all manner of automata.
Two centuries on, his eponymous brand would pay homage to that age, with the Bird Repeater Fall of the Rhine becoming the latest in a modern collection of bird-themed timepieces, which include the “singing” Charming Bird watch and several more metiers d’art creations.
