Petite Heure Minute

If the Grande Seconde brings the large seconds counter to the fore, the Petite Heure Minute is born as its most essential variation: the same base architecture, but without the seconds indication, reduced to a single off-center hours/minutes subdial on a more compact case, typically 35 mm. This sober layout has made the collection, ever since its development in the second half of the 2000s, the preferred canvas for the decorative techniques of the La Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture.

Around the small subdial, in fact, a wide expanse of dial remains free, which the in-house artisans use to apply painted or plique-à-jour Grand Feu enamel, carved mother-of-pearl, hand engraving and straw marquetry (marqueterie de paille): fine-craft techniques that Jaquet Droz claims as a direct heritage of the decorative attention already present in Pierre Jaquet-Droz's table clocks in the 18th century. Recurring motifs include dragons, tigers, birds and landscapes inspired by nature or distant cultures, often produced in numbered editions.

Precisely because of this vocation, the Petite Heure Minute has become over time the brand's most representative women's collection, offered mainly in 18-carat white or red gold, often with diamond-set bezels, and produced in very limited series that make it, more than a watch of current production, a collector's object tied to the individual decorated piece.