Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour

Quick specs Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour
Price: $ 75,000 | approx. € 69.000 | approx. £ 52,200
Size: 42 mm
Reference: unknown

Although the Rotonde de Cartier collection counts more than 60 different models there wasn’t a skeletonized model with “mysterious hours”. Until now. This is the Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour. Just like the Cartier Rotonde De Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon is has some magic.

Let’s start with the main attraction, the mystery complication. How can these hour and minute hands float in the air? They seem to move with no apparent mechanism to drive them. It is likely that the French magician and watchmaker Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin (1805-1871) was the first to have a clock with floating hands. His first mystery clock even won a bronze medal at the Exhibition of the French Industry of 1839.

On the right the Cartier Model A mystery clock from 1912 by Maurice Couet

Much later, in 1912, the French clock & watchmaker Maurice Couet made the first mystery clock for jeweler Louis Cartier. It was called the Model A clock, with a rectangular 8 day caliber, a gold plated movement, Swiss lever escapement, bimetallic balance and a balance spring made by Breguet. The trick? Glass plates. The movement is in the base and each hand is attached to a glass disc with toothed edge. The movement drives the vertical racks, you can make up the rest.

The magic of the Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour comes from two sapphire discs

Within the Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour it is more or less the same. Each hand is fitted to a glass disc. How these discs are connected to Cartier’s caliber 9983 MC is unclear as the skeletonized dial does not unveil that. But enough to be very attractive. And with a case diameter of 42 millimeters it’s rather sporty. Did you notice the Roman numeral cut-outs of the dial?