Louis Moinet Savanna Tourbillon Tiger Watch Review
The Louis Moinet Savanna Tourbillon Tiger is a pièce unique, featuring a nature-themed montage of hand-painted jigsaw pieces, arranged at different heights. In addition, the watch is equipped with a flying tourbillon and incorporates two barrels that provide a prodigious power reserve of 96 hours. Tempted? Well, sadly this model is sold; however, as Mark McArthur-Christie explains in his own unique style, there are alternative jigsaw-style dial options available.
Louis Moinet watch review
The backstories of watches are often more fascinating than anything the marketing brochures and press releases tell you. It’s such a shame that we never get to hear them. Just imagine the meeting from which this new Louis Moinet emerged…
Like all meetings, let’s assume it started with the usual scrabble for coffee and the senior staffers vying to secure those posh chocolate Leibniz biscuits, leaving everyone else with the Swiss equivalent of Rich Tea. A bit of small talk and down to business.
“OK people, we’ve already invented the chronograph, made a dial from microelectronic silicon wafer and stuck a tourbillon in it, done one with a miniature working oilfield donkey engine, used a fossilised T-Rex tooth, then remember that one with tiny rotating spaceships? You know, it had a double tourbillon and a Martian meteorite…” Being Louis Moinet, this could have gone on for a while.
Finally, Jean-Marie Schaller could pause, take a sip of his latte and present the challenge. “So, what are we going to do next?”
Louis Moinet creativity
Presumably, the suggestion for a plutonium-powered fusée watch with Vantablack antimatter hands was quietly shelved for another day before someone suggested painting a tiger on a dial and maybe doing a few more watches with different savannah creatures too.
At this point, there might have been some polite sniggering followed by more Leibniz-snaffling to hide the embarrassment. A tiger? Seriously? We could do that before breakfast and still have time for a second bowl of muesli.
Jigsaw puzzle dial
But then the idea would have been set out in full. Not just a tiger – of course not. The dial would be made from a jigsaw (still sniggering – FAR too easy – that lot in Geneva have already done it) but the 81 tiny pieces would be individually set into the dial at different levels so the artist would have to paint the edges, fractions of a millimetre thin, of some of them too. THEN we’ll put a flying tourbillon with a double barrel in it, just because we can. Even better, to anyone just taking a quick glance, it would look like we’d just painted a tiger on the dial of a gold watch. Brilliant!
No more sniggering and off to work to find someone who could paint a perfectly realistic tiger on 81 pieces of jigsaw, some measuring less than 2mm, including the edges. Now those would have been interesting phone calls.
The dial on this particular Savanna uses four different heights for the tiger pavé, each with a cricket’s toenail of variance, to give the dial depth, sloping down from the centre of the dial to the edge. Each one goes to make up the face of the tiger, painted in headache-inducing detail, in acrylic. And because jigsaws, very sensibly, are usually square, there’s the extra challenge of making one circular, with even smaller rounded edge pieces. Taken altogether, there’s something delightful about the miniaturist’s craft, working at this level of detail on something so small. In case you’re worried, they’re all secured so nothing comes off and goes rattling around inside.
Louis Moinet Savanna Tourbillon Tiger case
Then there’s the case. It’s cut from 18ct pink gold and measures a fraction under 41mm in diameter. The lugs are pierced and the crown is mounted on its own guard, screwed to the case side. From an engineering angle, it’s a delight to see the way the 20 mm strap is secured with trilobed screws rather than anything as everyday as springbars. The display caseback is fixed with six screws using the same principle but in a different execution. As ever, it’s good to see a caseback that’s screwed on rather than screwed in – less torsion on the caseback seal, perfectly lining up and less potential for scratches on disassembly and reassembly.
The tiger dial sits under a domed sapphire, so you get the best possible view of the artist’s work. With this watch, the case acts like a frame – it’s there to show off the painting rather than being the main attraction – but it’s still attractive enough in its own right to be worth a closer look.
Louis Moinet Caliber LM135
Then there’s the movement. In this case (sorry – bad pun) the Caliber LM135. If mechanical art as well as wildlife is your thing, then you’ll enjoy the LM135. It’s a 26-jewel movement that the firm uses in various watches. It’s hand-wound, so you have to interact with it; a thoroughly good thing. You have two mainspring barrels to wind through the logo-adorned crown, delivering 96 hours of power. This is wonderfully unnecessary – who’s not going to pick up this watch just for the joy of winding? Each barrel puts its power into the geartrain simultaneously, so you should see a flatter torque curve. The balance runs happily at 28,800 vph.
Finishing-wise, the LM135 is all you’d expect from a firm of this calibre (sorry, unauthorised puns again) with stippling, striping, circular brushing, polished screw heads, partial skeletonisation and anglage. Louis Moinet has made a classically beautiful and functional movement without any baroque flourishes.
Louis Moinet Savanna Tourbillon Tiger – closing thoughts
If you don’t fancy a tiger (The single tiger watch has already been sold, as have the lion and the leopard versions too – people clearly have a thing for big cats), you could always have an elephant or a cobra. Or, apparently, for special clients, the firm will create a watch with an image of their choosing. But by now the brand’s artisans will surely be up for a new challenge. Perhaps a pop-up sculpture depicting each portal of Chartres Cathedral appearing through a window on the dial?
At this level, a watch is, in essence, functional art. Rather like a jewelled orrery or an engraved astrolabe, it’s a way of applying creativity to something that has a job to do. There’s a joyful element of ‘let’s do it just because we can’ that gives one faith in a rather puritan world that sees ornament as unnecessary expense and faff. It’s good to know there are still craftspeople who want to make everyday things, like telling the time, special.
Further reading
Technical specifications
- Model: Louis Moinet Savanna Tourbillon Tiger
- Reference: LM-135.50.TI
- Case: 18-carat 5N rose gold case, diameter 40.7 mm, water resistance 3 ATM (30 metres), domed sapphire crystal to front, sapphire caseback.
- Functions: hours, minutes, flying tourbillon
- Movement: Calibre 135, hand-wound movement; frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 26 jewels, power reserve 96 hours.
- Strap: alligator leather strap paired with an 18-carat 5N rose gold folding clasp.
- Price: SOLD
- Limited Edition: pièce unique