The Quest: 270 years of Excellence Watch Exhibition
Harrods, the esteemed department store in London, is currently hosting Vacheron Constantin’s ‘The Quest: 270 years of Excellence’ exhibition. This immersive experience (16 October – 13 November) provides an insight into the Maison’s history, spanning 270 years. It showcases the many artisanal techniques employed at the company’s Geneva-based Manufacture, including miniature painting, grisaille enamelling, engraving, gem-setting and hand-guilloché. Moreover, the exhibition provides horophiles with the rare opportunity to see the brand’s latest Métiers d’Art release, the Tribute to the Quest of Time.
Vacheron Constantin x Harrods
Vacheron Constantin has opened a major exhibition at Harrods in London, as part of its 270th anniversary. The Maison takes this opportunity to curate some of its most important archives alongside several visually and technically impressive contemporary pieces. This one-off exhibition invites visitors to trace the brand’s longstanding relationship with all things astronomical. Central to The Quest: 270 years of Excellence exhibition is the Manufacture’s latest Métiers d’Art release – the Tribute to the Quest of Time, a double-sided timepiece that encapsulates the Maison’s objective of combining artisanal craftsmanship with mechanical excellence. The new manual Manufacture movement, the Calibre 3670, powers this limited-edition watch that’s brimming with technical complexity.
The watch, alongside many other timepieces, calibres, components and watchmaking tools, is presented beneath a breathtaking display of the Milky Way and distant galaxies. Here, within the prestigious walls of Harrods, visitors are invited to contemplate their own personal journey, choosing a date and time that’s special to them before receiving a precise chart of the sky as it appeared at that exact moment.
The Vacheron Constantin Tribute to the Quest of Time is a 512-component piece that carries multiple patent applications and a range of technical features, including a dual mode retrograde display, an extended power reserve and a high-frequency regulator. It also integrates advanced decorative techniques, such as detailed hand engraving and complex finishes, that reflect the visual language of automata and the brand’s relationship to astronomical instruments of the past.
The dial features a man, forged from sandblasted, gold PVD-coated titanium, whose arms serve as a double retrograde indicator, pointing to two 18ct white gold displays for the hours and minutes. The display of time can be enjoyed in one of two ways. In one mode, the hands move continuously, marking the constant passage of time, similar to a conventional set of hands. In the other mode, the arms spring into action, pointing momentarily to the time before resuming their position in a state of rest.
A beautifully decorated, hand-engraved three-dimensional moon-phase display is also present on the dial, occupying the 12 o’clock position. Two sequential tracks displaying the power reserve indicator sit at 5 and 7 o’clock. Featured on the reverse side of this double-sided timepiece is a feat of engineering endowed with a laser-engraved celestial sky chart engraved into a piece of sapphire, tracking the constellations with notable accuracy, deviating only by one day in 9,130 years.
To the rear of the watch, a depiction of the Geneva sky replicates how it would have appeared on the night of the manufacturer’s founding in 1755. Vacheron Constantin explains that the exhibition places the Tribute and other related objects within a broader narrative, showing how the brand’s preoccupation with time, astronomy and automata has evolved from historical pocket watches and clocks into contemporary modern-day expressions of Haute Horlogerie.
For watch aficionados, the Harrods display provides a rare opportunity to see the Tribute to the Quest of Time, a watch limited to 20 pieces and normally only seen in the Maison’s boutiques. At this moment, the exhibition will be the only public venue where the timepiece can be examined in person.
Vacheron Constantin celestial-themed watches
The Harrods exhibition presents the Tribute to the Quest of Time watch with earlier celestial-themed models, including the Métiers d’Art Copernicus Celestial Spheres watch (2017), the Métiers d’Art Tribute to the Celestial and the Les Cabinotiers Celestia Astronomical Grand Complication 3600 (2017).
Vacheron Constantin’s London exhibition recognises that collectors not only assign value to technical merit, but also to heritage. The Tribute to the Quest of Time watch is historically significant and tells a story that clearly defines the brand’s evolution and showcases its amassed experience gained over 270 years.
The Quest: 270 years of Excellence – a rare opportunity
A department store that has become a venue for high-end cultural displays and luxury retail initiatives, Harrods is one of only a few global venues capable of hosting a project of this scale. The Quest: 270 years of Excellence exhibition showcases historical pocket watches and contemporary masterpieces while reinforcing the retailer’s standing as a destination for discerning consumers. This is the chance for a broader audience to view items seldom seen elsewhere, including the extraordinary Tribute to the Quest of Time.