Van Cleef & Arpels has always approached watchmaking a little differently. Rather than pursuing complications purely for their technical merit, the brand has long used mechanical watchmaking as a means of storytelling, resulting in its aptly named Poetic Complications collection. Few watches embody this philosophy quite as completely as the Midnight Planétarium.
First unveiled in 2014, the Midnight Planétarium is essentially a mechanical planetarium for the wrist, displaying the real-time movement of six planets around the Sun. While Van Cleef & Arpels provided the vision and unmistakable aesthetic, the defining factor here is the involvement of Christiaan van der Klaauw, arguably the most important name in modern astronomical watchmaking.
Van der Klaauw's fascination with astronomy stretches back to the very beginning of his career. Having started by making astronomical clocks before turning to wristwatches, his work has been almost singularly dedicated to translating the movement of the heavens into mechanical form. It was this expertise that Van Cleef & Arpels turned to when developing the Midnight Planétarium, with Christiaan van der Klaauw spending two and a half years developing the extraordinary planetary module that sits beneath the dial.
Rather than simply representing the planets aesthetically, the Midnight Planétarium depicts their actual relative movement around the Sun. Mercury completes its orbit in 88 days, Venus in 224 days, Earth in 365 days, Mars in 687 days, Jupiter in approximately 12 years and Saturn in more than 29 years. This means that the tiny Saturn on the dial will make just a handful of complete rotations over the course of an owner's lifetime.
More impressively, the planets aren't merely moving at approximately the right speeds. Once correctly set, their relative positions correspond to their actual positions in the solar system for that particular date. It is an almost wonderfully unnecessary complication, but that is precisely what makes it so special.
The example you see here today is the Ref. VCARO4J000, housed in a substantial 44mm pink gold case. Despite its size, the conventional idea of a dial almost disappears entirely. Instead, the watch presents a miniature solar system rendered across a series of concentric aventurine discs, the deep blue material naturally flecked with inclusions that resemble a night sky filled with stars.
At the centre sits the Sun in pink gold, surrounded by six tiny planets, each represented by a different hard stone. Mercury is rendered in serpentine, Venus in chloromelanite, Earth in turquoise, Mars in red jasper, Jupiter in blue agate and Saturn in sugilite. As the planetary mechanism slowly moves beneath the dial, each stone travels around the Sun at a speed corresponding to the actual orbit of the planet it represents.
There are no conventional hour and minute hands either. Instead, time is indicated by a pink gold shooting star travelling around the outer 24-hour scale. It is an ingenious solution that allows the practical function of telling the time to exist without interrupting the spectacle at the centre of the watch.
There is even a wonderfully romantic 'lucky day' complication. Running around the perimeter of the dial is a graduated calendar, while a red triangular pointer is controlled by the rotating bezel. The wearer can rotate the bezel to position this pointer against a personally significant date, whether a birthday, anniversary or otherwise. As Earth makes its annual journey around the Sun, it eventually reaches the selected date and aligns directly beneath a star engraved onto the sapphire crystal.
Turning the watch over reveals a caseback that is almost as fascinating as the dial itself. The automatic movement and Christiaan van der Klaauw planetary module can be seen through the sapphire crystal, while surrounding it are the names Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, accompanied by a key identifying the different stones used to represent each planet on the dial.
More interestingly, two cyclops-style magnifiers are integrated into the caseback. One magnifies a display for the month and day, while the other displays the year. These aren't simply additional calendar complications for the sake of displaying more information. They form an important part of setting the planetarium, allowing the mechanism to be calibrated to a specific date and, in turn, positioning the six planets where they would actually be in the solar system at that point in time. Two pushers integrated into the side of the case are used to make these calendar adjustments.
Powering the Midnight Planétarium is an automatic Roger Dubuis-derived Stern Manufacture base calibre, upon which sits the extraordinary planetarium module developed exclusively for Van Cleef & Arpels by Christiaan van der Klaauw. The complete mechanism comprises an incredible 396 components.
It is this involvement from Christiaan van der Klaauw that, for me, elevates the Midnight Planétarium beyond simply being an elaborate Van Cleef & Arpels novelty. Van der Klaauw dedicated virtually his entire watchmaking career to astronomical complications, and there is a wonderful authenticity in having one of the world's foremost specialists in mechanical astronomy responsible for what is effectively a miniature mechanical solar system.
The result is one of the most memorable astronomical watches of the modern era. It is large, extravagant and completely unapologetic, yet underneath all of the theatre is a genuinely extraordinary piece of mechanical watchmaking. More than a decade after its introduction, there is still very little else quite like it.
