Cartier set sail in April 1534 with two ships and 61 men, and arrived 20 days afterwards. Throughout that first expedition, he researched the western coast of Newfoundland and the Gulf of St. Lawrence as far as today’s Anticosti Island, which Cartier known as Assomption. He’s also credited with the discovery of what is currently known as Prince Edward Island.Cartier returned to make his report on the trip to King Francis, bringing together two recorded Native Americans from the Gaspé Peninsula. The king sent Cartier straight across the Atlantic the next year with three ships and 110 men. With the two captives acting as manuals, the explorers headed up the St. Lawrence River as far as Quebec, in which they found a foundation camp.The following winter havoc on the expedition, together with 25 of Cartier’s men dying of scurvy and the whole group incurring the anger of the initially friendly Iroquois population. At the spring, the explorers seized several Iroquois chiefs and traveled back to France. Though he’d been able to research it Cartier advised the king of the Iroquois’ accounts of another great river stretching west, leading to untapped riches and possibly to Asia.War in Europe stalled plans for another expedition, that finally went ahead in 1541. This time, King Francis billed the nobleman Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval using founding a permanent colony in the northern lands. Cartier sailed a few months before Roberval, also arrived in Quebec in August 1541.
Cartier is rarely the first name that comes to mind when it comes to the annals of fine watchmaking, but the French maison has quietly and consistently been bolstering its catalog of super-interesting, high-end models. Case in point: the recently announced Rotonde De Cartier Jewelry Box Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon – an ambitious, Geneva Seal-certified creation, characterized by its tourbillon complication at 10:00, seemingly floating in space.
The rhythmic illusion of this special Cartier Jewelry Box is made possible by its round “rotonde” series case – a lithe, curvaceous new stage for Cartier to showcase its best complications. In this case, we get two in the Calibre 9407 MC: a minute repeater with hardened steel gongs, and the “floating” tourbillon, held in place by a rotating sapphire disc that rotates every five minutes, with the tourbillon itself completing a rotation each 60 seconds. The floating effect is inspired by Cartier’s “mystery” clocks first created in 1912. Perhaps most impressive about the whole package, though, isn’t just the finely tuned auditory notes or visual spectacle, but the sheer technical feat of fitting 448 individually finished components into a case measuring only 11.15mm thick, by 45mm wide.
Cartier 9407 MC Caliber Minute Repeater Mechanism
Cartier 9407 MC Caliber Tourbillon Mechanism
Minute repeaters and tourbillons represent two of watchmaking’s most challenging feats, so getting them together on a shared and surprisingly wearable stage is a feat in and of itself. But what really just works with the Cartier Rotonde De Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon (try saying that five times fast) is how damned cohesive it all looks – no small task, especially given the levels of complication we’re dealing with. Here, we have black rhodium-finished movement bridges employing contrasting circular graining and Geneva stripes – all collective hallmarks of the Geneva Seal – an ultra-exclusive certification of exemplary quality that fewer than 0.01% of all Swiss watch exports see (you can read all about the Geneva Seal in our in-depth report here). Even in all its complexity and lack of symmetry (notice the de-centered hour and minute hands), however, the dial still finds surprising balance in the negative space occupied by the floating tourbillon.
Activated by a push-piece trigger at 4:00, the minute repeater has been designed around optimizing the four principles of sound to deliver the most pleasing acoustic experience possible. Those considerations start with volume and richness – engineering the Rotonde de Cartier 8971 Mc Movement case from ultralight titanium while building the square striking gongs out of hardened steel and maximizing the surface area for the transmission of powerful sound vibrations. The timbre, or clarity, of each note was also considered; with the hourly gongs tuned to a B (the 5th octave), and the minutes to a D (6th octave). Lastly, the duration or resonance of the sound itself is preserved through a silent inertia flywheel (visible at 7:00), which regulates the striking speed of the hammers to ensure every strike is as consistent as the last.
If it weren’t for the wordmark on the dial at 12:00 or the signature sapphire cabochon set into the crown, there’s nothing about this watch that screams “Cartier” – which is probably a good thing, particularly for those not yet convinced that the watchmaker is becoming increasingly capable of going toe-to-toe with the likes of the haute horology elite. At the time of writing, the price of the G.Cartier 12v-35a-03531 Rotonde de Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon watch is $449,400. cartier.com
