A Palm Tree Whispered and Parmigiani Made a Watch
La Ravenale honours Michel Parmigiani with a revived minute repeater and exquisite artistry inspired by the harmony of nature.
Each second of December, Parmigiani Fleurier celebrates its founder not with words but with creation. For Michel Parmigiani’s seventy-fifth birthday, the Maison unveils La Ravenale, an Objet d’Art that unites natural geometry with mechanical purity.
Nature as architecture
La Ravenale takes its name from the Traveller’s Palm of Madagascar, a plant admired for its perfect fan symmetry and its ability to gather water for travellers. This natural order inspires the engravings that run across the case, the dial and the movement bridges.
The Lépine pocket watch format offers a generous canvas for métiers d’art, and its reverse displays a striking marquetry of opal and jade sourced from Turkey, Guatemala and Australia. Each fragment is individually shaped and polished, forming a serene composition that shifts beautifully with the light.
A century-old voice revived
At its heart, the piece houses a restored minute repeater calibre from the workshops of Ed. Koehn, a Geneva maison long valued by connoisseurs. Dating from the nineteen twenties, the movement comes from Michel Parmigiani’s private collection of antique mechanisms.
Its restoration required exceptional care since every original component had to be preserved. Historical calibration marks were reinstated by hand, and the bridges were engraved without disturbing the century-old friction set jewels.
When activated, the repeater sounds the time on two precisely tuned gongs. A low note signals the hours, a high note the minutes, and a blended tone the quarters. The dial conceals the complication entirely, and the open internal architecture of the Lépine case allows the chimes to resonate with clarity and presence.
The touch of the Mains d’Or
La Ravenale is shaped by master artisans, including Atelier Blandenier for engraving and Laurent Jolliet, Switzerland’s last master chain maker. The chain, which requires almost one hundred hours to complete, is crafted entirely in eighteen-carat white gold with links that echo the geometry of the watch itself.
A refined tribute
La Ravenale is a reflection of Michel Parmigiani’s belief that time is living matter shaped by balance and patience. It is both a celebration of his legacy and a contemporary expression of the Maison’s devotion to beauty technique and authenticity. A fitting tribute for a life spent elevating the art of horology.
