This is one of my personal favourite watches. Being born on August 8th, I’m definitely a Leo and while others have tried (I’m looking at you Monsieur de Chanel), this Jaquet Droz does the best job of recreating the nuances of a lion.
Set against the beautiful backdrop of a black Grand Feu dial, the majority of the bottom half of this watch is taken up by a hand-painted lion. Jaquet Droz has also made another model with a lion prominently featured, but that one showed a lion’s profile view. This current model’s depiction of the front view of a lion is significantly better. While the profile view looked more like it should be hung up on a wall as a painting, this version looks like it actually fits the watch and is meant to be worn.
This definitely isn’t your typical dress watch though as it comes in at a fairly large 43mm. Would I have liked 39 better? Definitely. The larger size allows for a larger lion depiction, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that this is a dress watch that doesn’t feel like a dress watch. I understand that the painter probably needed the size of the larger dial in order to paint it accurately, so I can live with the larger case size, but 39-41mm would have been ideal. This watch features a silicium balance spring, dual barrels, an 18kt red gold rotor, and houses a 68-hour power reserve.
The Jaquet Droz Petite Heure Minute Lion is limited to 28 pieces.