Louis Moinet Geopolis Opal Watch Review
The Louis Moinet Geopolis Opal comes on the back of last year’s Cosmpolis model, an exceptional watch with a dial incorporating 12 meteorites, the ‘most meteorite inserts in a watch’. On this occasion, the Geopolis Opal swaps said meteorites for the eponymous rainbow-evincing stones. Mark McArthur-Christie provides an insight into the making of this watch, a product of love not ego.
Louis Moinet watch
Take a right off Grand Rue in Saint Blaise, just opposite the newsagent, and a few metres on your left, on Rue de Temple, is the atelier of Louis Moinet. If you didn’t spot the fleur de lys in the window or recognise the name you could easily miss it. It’s a plain, four-storey building that looks like it was planted there three centuries ago, made in the warm local stone. Solid, definitely not shouty, clearly well-built. Appropriate.
Jean-Marie Schaller
It can be tempting to dismiss resurrection brands like Louis Moinet as little more than sales promotion, with an old name dusted off, polished up and painted over the door. But listen to the firm’s owner and creative director, Jean-Marie Schaller, for more than a few minutes and you realise Louis Moinet is not a marketing exercise, it’s a passion and a foundation for his work.
Image – Louis Moinet Compteur de Tierces
Monsieur Schaller has done more – quite rightly – to put Moinet on the horological map than anyone else. He acquired Louis Moinet’s early chronograph, the Compteur de Tierces, had it sympathetically restored and brought it back to the firm’s present-day Swiss HQ. It was once thought the watch, a ‘thirds timer’ had only existed in his “Traité Général d’Horlogerie.” Also appropriately, given Mr Schaller’s passion for meteorites, the Compteur de Tierces was intended to set the precise distance between the crosshairs in Moinet’s astronomical telescope.
Image – Louis Moinet Compteur de Tierces
Guinness World Record
And now that atelier in Saint Blaise is the birthplace of a new creation, the Louis Moinet Geopolis Opal. If you’re a Moinetist or Moinetiste (surely there should be a name for disciples of Monsieur Moinet and his work), you might recognise the design of the Geopolis from last year’s appropriately-named Cosmopolis. For the Louis Moinet Cosmopolis, the firm decided to see how many pieces of meteorite they could put in a watch case (including a piece behind the tourbillon) and, in the process, won a Guinness World Record. It can sit on Mr Schaller’s mantlepiece alongside the record for World’s First Chronograph for the Compteur de Tierces.
Image – Louis Moinet Cosmpolis
With this new watch, I’m guessing the firm is tilting for the record for the most pieces of opal in a timepiece. On the dial, where the Cosmopolis uses meteorite, are twelve sliver-thin pieces of opal, each mounted in a gold setting. So that record should be a cinch. There are plenty of other opal watches, but they usually feature a single piece rather than an entire selection.
Image – Jean-Marie Schaller pictured with two certificates from Guinness World Records
Louis Moinet Geopolis Opal – Caliber LM135
The new watch not only follows the Cosmopolis’ case and dial design but also shares its movement, the Caliber LM135 with its off-centre flying tourbillon.
Jean-Marie Schaller says he believes there are two sorts of watchmakers; the ones who put love into their watches and the ones who put in ego instead. With another echo of their atelier’s lack of fuss, it’s clear that this is one of the former. The movement isn’t a flourish of decoration for its own sake. Instead, there’s subtle circular brushing, striping, polished screw heads and anglage, even on the tourbillon cage. Take a look at the barrel (actually two barrels, but more of that later) and its partial skeletonisation too.
There’s little indication of the watchmaking nous that enables the movement’s twin mainspring barrels to run for 96 hours without a wind. They’re positioned one over the other, a system known as ‘volte-face’. This isn’t just handy if you’re a bit lazy or forgetful about winding your watches (although you’d surely not be with this one); both barrels transmit their power to the train of gears simultaneously, so the torque curve should be much flatter. Keeping things moving smoothly at 28,800 vph (4 Hz) are 26 jewelled bearings.
Louis Moinet Geopolis Opal case
The Geopolis’ case – unlike its sister the Cosmopolis’ pink gold – is cut from 18ct red gold. The sapphire dome over the dial is designed to detract as little as possible from your view of the dial, hands and tourbillon and it gives a real sense of space and air. The case acts like a setting for the stones behind the crystal – it’s not the main act, but it still has a clarity of design and quality of workmanship that lets it stand in its own right.
There’s sapphire on the back, too, with the caseback held on with seven tri-lobed screws. We can’t imagine anyone would get the screwdrivers out unless they were sitting at a bench in Rue de Temple, but there’s a bit of extra security all the same. And it’s good to see a caseback that’s screwed on rather than screwed in – it removes any issues with torsion on the seal and everything always lines up as it should. Seven screws is an interesting choice – there are two on the crown side of the case. Given the screw holes for the crown guard, this adds some extra rigidity and strength.
The lugs are cut away and polished and, like the caseback, use tri-lobed screws to hold the strap securely. With a watch of this weight and cost, using screwed bars makes a great deal more sense than trusting to luck and a standard spring-fit bar.
Louis Moinet Geopolis Opal dial
With a case and movement of this quality, it’s often hard to talk about any one element being the star of the show, but with this watch the dial has to edge it. The background is black onyx, the ideal backdrop to let the opals stand out. That’s because they’re crystal opals, so they have what gemologists call ‘diaphaneity’; they’re translucent or transparent. Even though they’re mounted blind, the refraction of the light passing through the stones makes them sing. Each one is different, including the stone hidden behind the tourbillon.
Cutting opals isn’t a job for the easily frustrated, the inexperienced or the heavy-handed. Their large crystalline structure makes them friable. In this case, Jean-Marie Schaller called in someone he knows and trusts; renowned gem cutter and friend, Daniel Haas. One hopes the task of polishing and cutting the stones to a wafery 0.5 mm didn’t strain the friendship too much.
The dial is really all about the stones, but the two hands that do the work of time-telling aren’t left out. They’re facetted, brushed, skeletonised and partially infilled with Super-LumiNova.
Louis Moinet Geopolis Opal – made with a lot of love
There’s a pleasing symmetry here. Last year, the firm made the Cosmopolis with fragments of meteorite starring the dial. This year, they’ve looked to the Earth for dial material with onyx and opal. Either watch could, if we’re being honest, have turned out as a blingfest. After all, records are usually about ego and excess – the fastest, the largest, the most. But, just like that reassuring building on Rue de Temple, the two watches manage to aim for quality rather than unnecessary ornamentation. Perhaps that’s because rather than ego, they’re made with a lot of love.
Further reading
Technical specifications
- Model: Louis Moinet COSMOPOLIS
- Reference: LM-135.50.OP
- Case: 18-carat red gold with Grade 5 titanium inner case, diameter 40.7 mm, water resistance 3 ATM (30 metres), domed sapphire crystal to front, sapphire caseback.
- Functions: hours, minutes, flying tourbillon
- Movement: Caliber LM135, hand-wound movement; frequency 28,800 vph (4 Hz), 26 jewels, power reserve 96 hours.
- Strap: alligator leather strap paired with an 18-carat red gold folding clasp.
- Price on application
- Limited Edition: pièce unique