Simply Abu Dhabi VI

7 9 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I GrandComplication Skeleton pocket watch, calibre 9436MC: an ode to transparency byCartier. T o dare to be different in fine watchmaking is an art in its own right, and braving convention is sometimes a sign of luxury. For a man who feels very much at home in the world of today, to carry a Cartier Grand Complication Skeleton pocket watch reveals an approach to life in which the grace of every movement closely reflects the relationship he maintains with time and with the objects designed to convey it. It is an invitation to all those watch lovers for whom looking to the past is a way of finding inspiration for the present and – who knows? – of maybe inventing the future. To choose to carry about one’s person a watch kept on a chain encourages a relationship with time that is different from that of one’s contemporaries. For many who are passionate about the art of measuring time, this mode of use – even if for over five hundred years it remained the only way to keep a watch about one’s person – has now long since become a practice from a bygone age. And yet, when one stops to think about it, the pocket watch offers a welcome alternative to the creeping conformity of the times and enables all those watch lovers who chafe against routine to rediscover a form of ceremony that is guaranteed to make one stand out from the crowd (and a very good thing, too). The mystery of the invisible... For watch lovers, to see a chain hanging from a buttonhole is often a source of intellectual torture. For those who long to learn what models are owned by other connoisseurs, an air of tantalising mystery emanates from the end of this often precious accoutrement. They are thus obliged to wait until the owner concerned finally removes it from its hiding-place, with a gesture that is always more than a little ceremonious, to gain a fleeting glimpse of its appearance. Cartier, aware of this type of timepiece’s potential for causing