Celestial Voyager VK Edition

Description

Celestial Voyager VK Edition

A platinum world time watch capturing the poetry of 14 cities around the world.

Introduction

ANDERSEN Genève presents the Celestial Voyager VK Edition. Created in collaboration with prominent New York–based private collector Vasu Kulkarni, this extraordinary project encompasses a limited edition of fourteen unique timepieces (one for him, twelve for his friends, plus one artist proof)—believed to be the first time a single cohesive series of world-timer watches has been commissioned with fourteen entirely distinct miniature-painted dials, each depicting a different city.

Each watch features a unique miniature-painted dial highlighting the city where its owner resides or holds a deep connection: New York, Greeley, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Prague, Madrid, and Zürich. Each dial composition was personally directed by Kulkarni, who worked closely with his friends to select landmarks, define spatial relationships, and ensure each city's unique character was faithfully captured in miniature.

The inaugural Celestial Voyager VK Edition showcases the scenery of New York City, with a dial that captures the beauty and energy of the city that never sleeps. At its centre, a micro-painted depiction of the New York City skyline at sunset is rendered in stunning detail directly onto a disc of dark Tahitian mother-of-pearl, in a space less than 2cm in diameter. Around the skyline, the iridescent nacre serves as both the luminous sky and the shimmering surface of the East River—a kaleidoscopic sunset ambience that shifts dynamically with the light.

Background

Over the past four decades, ANDERSEN Genève has emerged as the leading authority in highly crafted worldtime watches made in the classical tradition of Louis Cottier, the complication’s inventor. This expertise traces back to founder Svend Andersen’s work with Cottier-derived world timers in Patek Philippe’s Grand Complications workshop during the 1970s. Through successive series and innovations, the elegant worldtime complication has become a cornerstone of the ANDERSEN Genève watchmaking. It uses a sophisticated, ultra-slim in-house module first designed by Svend in 1989, which has been repeatedly refined over the years.

First launched in 2021, the Celestial Voyager was conceived as the ultimate expression of the worldtimer with a decorative dial, a highly coveted format in haute horlogerie. Notable for its classical dual-crown construction and distinctive “eagle’s wing” lug design, it has since become a canvas for bespoke unique pieces and ultra-limited editions that showcase Swiss artisan craftsmanship in its most exquisite forms, from grand feu and cloisonné enamel to mother-of-pearl, guilloché and 21ct BlueGold.

Previous editions include two “Sunset over Cappadocia” versions, the “Aurora/Arctic Sunrise Borealis”, “Sakura” editions, and the “Supersonic”, which celebrated Concorde soaring over New York City.

Celestial Voyager VK Edition: A UNIQUE EXPRESSION OF 14 cities around the world

The Celestial Voyager VK Edition distils the romance of 14 different cities into 14 unique timepieces, beginning with New York. Never before has a single commission yielded such a breadth of miniature-painted cityscapes within one unified collection—each dial a self-contained work of art, yet all sharing the same horological DNA and artistic vocabulary.

At its heart, a luminous dark Tahitian mother-of-pearl dial frames a hand-painted miniature of the Manhattan skyline. A light blue mother-of-pearl city ring encircles a 24-hour aventurine ring divided for day and night: blue aventurine by night, and aventurine overlaid with mother-of-pearl by day, with raised golden numerals standing in relief against the background.

The city ring is set in mother-of-pearl with blue lettering, with New York picked out in gold and the customary Andersen “A” at the Geneva position. Each of the 14 timepieces will have its depicted city highlighted in gold.

Skeletonised leaf-shaped hands in brushed yellow gold, a Celestial Voyager signature, complete the face. A subtle, highly personal reference to the city of the championship-winning Knicks is found on the 9 o'clock crown—used for setting the city ring—which bears a basketball motif, a nod to Kulkarni's passion for the sport.

THE ART OF miniature-PAINTING

The central scene depicts Manhattan as viewed from Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River in the foreground; beyond it lies the Seaport shoreline, with the Empire State Building standing tall at the centre, alongside One World Trade Center, the Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center. All this is depicted in a space of just 18.3mm in diameter.

To capture it, ANDERSEN Genève worked with master artisans to develop a rarely-seen technique of miniature-painting directly onto dark Tahitian mother-of-pearl. Working with specialised acrylic paints and lacquers applied on both sides of the disc, layer upon layer of colour is built up to create an almost sculptural, three-dimensional effect against the shimmering background, where purples, pinks and yellows dazzle to form a unique New York sunset. To further elevate the artistry, fine gold cloisonné-style trim outlines the architectural elements, giving the miniature painting an authentic, raised enamel appearance that evokes the grand tradition of Swiss cloisonné work.

For the finest details, the artist uses brushes with as few as one to three hairs. This enables extraordinary details like brickwork and suspended cables of the historic Brooklyn Bridge, the reflective sheen of the One World Trade Center tower, the curving segments of the Chrysler Building spire and the uniform windows of the skyscrapers to be rendered with microscopic detail. Each dial takes a minimum of two weeks to complete; any mistake bears the risk of the artist having to start over.

Across the fourteen dials, the dark Tahitian mother-of-pearl is deliberately left unpainted in areas representing sky and water, allowing the nacre's natural peacock iridescence—its shifting greens, purples, and blues—to become an integral part of each composition. No two discs are alike; the organic variations in the mother-of-pearl ensure that every dial possesses a unique luminosity that no paint could replicate.

ARTISAN HOROLOGY, ANDERSEN GENÈVE-STYLE

The refined 37.8mm case is crafted in Pt 950 platinum and carries the distinctive “eagle’s wings” lugs, a hallmark of the Celestial Voyager line. Each lug has a curving, pointed form with a scooped-out, convex profile that maximises light reflection — exceedingly difficult to polish and time-consuming to make in any metal, and exceptionally so in platinum. Each lug is then individually soldered to the body of the case, a traditional method rarely found in modern watchmaking. The polished bezel and lugs contrast strikingly with the horizontally brushed finish of the case body, which is also carried out by hand.

The watch’s two symmetrical crowns echo the ancestry of the third ANDERSEN Genève worldtime watch: the “Mundus” (made in 1995 and still today the thinnest ever worldtime watch!). They are extremely thin in the pursuit of elegance, yet still tactile given their width. The left crown, that bears a the basketball motif, adjusts the city ring, while the right crown, engraved with the ANDERSEN logo (A), adjusts the time.

On the reverse, the artistry continues. The ring around the movement is also fashioned from turquoise mother-of-pearl, while the winding rotor is made of 21-carat BlueGold, heated to a rich shade of deep blue and decorated with an intricate, interlocking wave-form hand guilloché.

21ct BlueGold is an ANDERSEN Genève speciality, created by heat-tempering 24ct gold mixed with iron elements to achieve radiant shades – a jewellery-making technique that, in watches, ANDERSEN Genève alone has mastered […]

Supplied by the brand to the GPHG for its entry.