Science fiction and jewelry watches are unlikely partners; yet, this odd pairing did not daunt the designers at Van Cleef & Arpels. Following its Jules-Verne-inspired Les Voyages Extraordinaires high-jewelry collection, which debuted in fall 2010, the Paris house has unveiled a prolific series of exquisite art watches based on Verne’s books: Five Weeks in a Balloon, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, A Journey to the Center of the Earth and From the Earth to the Moon. With such fertile raw materials to draw upon, Van Cleef & Arpels has produced an array of timepieces that are as fantastical as Verne’s 19th-century visions of travel to both earthly and other-worldly destinations. “In drawing on the novels of Jules Verne for inspiration we wished to open our workshops to a view of a wider universe,” says Nicolas Bos, vice president and director of creation. “This enables us to explore creative sources that are different from those that come from the world of high jewelry, while still retaining total freedom of expression.”
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