Communiqué uniquement disponible en anglais
Press release
The latest edition of the Arnold & Son Catalogue is lavishly illustrated and comes with a new layout and an entirely overhauled design. Its content ranges from the legends behind the brand to a full presentation and description of each model and their in-house manufacture movements. The final chapter is dedicated to the new Instrument Collection. Copies of the catalogue are available from authorized Arnold & Son retailer and distributors or can be downloaded from our website www.arnoldandson.com.
Flipbook of the catalogue
With a history going back almost 250 years, today Arnold & Son is proud to draw on and maintain that unique heritage, from a watchmaker who played a major role in the development of the modern mechanical watch. And, as Philippe Boven, Executive Vice President of Arnold & Son, explains, “We wanted our new catalogue to reflect that. It chronicles how John Arnold and his son played an influential role in the directions taken by English watchmaking. They combined a finely developed aesthetic sense with an ability to find solutions to technological problems, crafting magnificent movements and designs with cutting-edge mechanical features that garnered several patents.'' The history section of the catalogue also presents John Arnold's fascinating life and the regard in which he was held by King George III, and his fellow watchmakers – including A.-L. Breguet himself.
Moving on from past to present, the catalogue presents a brief overview of the brand's development and production facilities in La Chaux-de-Fonds, and explains how Arnold & Son belongs to a select group of watchmaking companies in Switzerland entitled to call themselves a manufacture. The brand's prowess in the development and production of in-house movements is reflected by an impressive collection of Arnold & Son calibres with a complete range of sophisticated complications. Unlike other watch manufacturers, who often use the same calibre for different models, Arnold & Son develops a new movement for every single model. Every Arnold & Son movement has its own story to tell and reflects the brand's heritage.
Presenting the brand's new focus, from 2012 on, two collections are presented to which the remainder of the catalogue is dedicated: the Royal and Instrument Collections. The Royal Collection is a reflection of elegance and sophistication in the inimitable English style. It was inspired by and pays tribute to the timepieces produced in the earlier part of Arnold's life and made by John Arnold for King George III and members of the royal court. The Royal Collection demonstrates the brand's traditional prowess in the classical decorative arts. As well as integrating sophisticated complications such as, tourbillon, equation of time and true solar time together with big date, month and multiple time zones, among other complications which are all housed in exquisitely elegant cases.
The new Instrument Collection and was inspired by the timepieces produced during the second part of John Arnold's career and, after his death, by his son, John Roger. These timepieces focused on chronometry, designed with absolute precision in mind, they were the work of watchmakers dedicated to solving the problem of determining longitude accurately at sea. So successful were they that Arnold & Son became principal suppliers of marine chronometers to the British Royal Navy. The Instrument Collection combines marine precision with aesthetic perfection, purist in design and draws on several of these timepieces made by John Roger, where the design permits the main complication to take centre stage. Like the Royal Collection, the Instrument Collection is a sublime expression of a long and proud heritage.
