A Traveller’s Palm in Horology: Parmigiani Fleurier Unveils Annual Objet D’Art La Ravenale
Where a collective of restorers, engravers, lapidaries and chain‑makers realize Michel Parmigiani’s vision of time as living matter.
Summary
- Parmigiani Fleurier celebrates its founder, Michel Parmigiani’s birthday this year with the La Ravenale Lépine pocket watch
- Housed in a white gold case with opal and jade marquetry, it draws aesthetic cues from the Traveller’s Palm and the Golden Ratio
Parmigiani Fleurier’s latest Objet d’Art, La Ravenale, is presented as a horological talisman that translates the geometry of nature into watchmaking. Unveiled as the Maison’s annual creation in celebrating its founder, Michel Parmigiani‘s birthday, the piece draws its name and formal inspiration from the Ravenala madagascariensis – the Traveller’s Palm – whose fan symmetry and Golden Ratio proportions inform the object’s visual language.
Rather than a conventional wristwatch, La Ravenale adopts a Lépine pocket-watch architecture in 18k white gold, where hand-engraved surfaces, a blue-treated white-gold dial and pared-back indications (hours, minutes, small seconds) emphasize proportion, harmony and the contemplative qualities of time.
The reverse of La Ravenale is a study in mineral contrast: a double back inlaid with opal and jade marquetry by LM Cadrans. Opal’s iridescent play evokes water and sky, its fragile fragments individually cut and set with micromosaic precision; jade provides a counterpoint of dense, serene depth. This dialogue of mutable and immutable materials is intended as a meditation on time’s dual nature – fleeting and eternal – and is complemented by the case’s hand-engraving, domed sapphire crystals and a crown set with a blue sapphire, all executed to evoke the Traveller’s Palm motif across metal and stone.
At its heart is a restored ultra-thin minute repeater calibre signed Ed. Koehn, Genève, dating from the 1920s and reborn by Parmigiani Fleurier’s Atelier de Restauration. The movement, originally conceived with a Genevan ideal of discreet mastery, retains its central hours and minutes, small seconds and a two-gong repeater with symmetrical hammers. Restorers have painstakingly reconditioned the mainplate, bevels and anglages, while hand-engraving palm motifs across the visible bridges links the movement’s mechanical architecture to the Traveller’s Palm theme, turning functional components into ornamental expressions of natural geometry.
For more information, head over to the Maison’s official website.
