The Tank de Cartier Replica: a watch that has stood the test of time
Timeless elegance:this could be the nickname of the Tank cartier replica,a watch with a concept invented in 1917 and which has stood the test of time for a century.
The Tank de Cartier Replica proves that there are watches capable of defying trends for a century,unaffected by the upheavals shaking the world of watchmaking.
Having immediately found,from its conception in 1917,a kind of definitive outline,the Tank has surfed on its timeless elegance which has made it timeless.
Despite numerous variations over the decades,the great principles of the original Tank have never been disavowed,as if this timepiece could win…until time itself.
A watch that defies time
What do Clark Gable,Gary Cooper,Elizabeth Taylor,Alain Delon,Ingrid Bergman,Audrey Hepburn,Mohammed Ali,Andy Warhol,Yves Saint Laurent and AndréMalraux–among many others–have in common?All wore a Tank Cartier Replica watch on their wrist.
The changes of time do not change this situation in any way:the Tank was the favorite timepiece of personalities who made and undid the world,from silent cinema to the heights of literature and thought.
Truman Capote said he owned seven models,which is why he offered one to a journalist who questioned him.
Fred Astaire continued to dance with it in the twilight of his life.
This watch was so resolutely timeless that actor Rudolph Valentino managed to convince director George Fitzmaurice to let him keep one on his wrist during the filming of Son of the Cheick(in 1926),defying the anachronism.
Is it so surprising,when we know that Louis Cartier always liked to be ahead of his time?
Already in 1904,Louis Cartier created a watch designed to be worn on the wrist,so Santos-Dumont could read the time while shaking through the air.
This did not prevent it–the watch–from retaining all its elegance,
because it was not certain that the advent of the functional and practical timepiece would sign the death certificate of design.
Formal research has always been an essential paradigm of the watch object at Cartier.
How to bring the dial into the line of the bracelet?How to ensure that one becomes the extension of the other?It will take the intuition leading to the Tank to define a case that is sometimes square,sometimes rectangular,and achieve a definitive outline,
a form of geometric ideal that responds to temporal perfection.
The origins of the Tank Cartier
1917,we are in the middle of the World War.
Louis Cartier Replica,fascinated by the tanks produced in Renault factories,embarked on the design of a watch model supposed to recall the shape of the tank.
The idea of the Tank was born.
Paying homage to steel monsters,Cartier drew inspiration for its case from a tank seen from above:square,surrounded by two side stretchers(imitation of tank tracks),with railway minute track and Roman numerals.
It is not only a model of timepiece that sees the light of day,but a timeless object.
Even before it was marketed,Cartier Replica offered a copy of its Tank to General Pershing,the commander of the expeditionary force in Europe.
Then he officially launched it in 1919,after the Great War,highlighting its blend of elegance and robustness.
The Tank is sweeping the world.
And without guns,but with drums and trumpets,it was an immediate success.
In the detail of the Tank
Recognizable everywhere,the Tank is defined by its archetypal elements:leather strap,square case caught between two stretchers that stretch it to a rectangle,mineral crystal,sword-shaped hands made of blued steel,Roman numerals,minute track in railroad,hand-wound mechanical movement with a power reserve of approximately 40 hours.
And of course,the sapphire cabochon as a winding mechanism,a distinctive sign of all watches Tank from Cartier Replica.
If we add that it is waterproof up to 30 meters from its first model,this makes the Tank an armored watch,designed to withstand everything,sports activities as well as combat.
And suddenly,at the heart of a watchmaking landscape that seems to have fallen into a deep sleep,the Tank de Cartier imposes new rules.
She ignores traditions,upsets conventions,reshuffles the cards of temporal aesthetics.
Few mythical models will have been able,as the Tank did,to preserve their own personality and soar above trends,to retain characteristics which,until today,will have ultimately changed little over the variations.
What if his tank design wasn’t just an inspiration?
And if there was,in the way this watch overturned the codes established to force modernity into the watch industry,a tank impulse and a logic of consolidation?
Because the Tank did not just cross the wall:it then secured its positions.
Beyond the anecdote of the tank,there is therefore a stylistic evolution as much as a practical one.
Cartier wanted to integrate the attachments of the bracelet to the case,seeking to merge one into the other,to make the timepiece a unique object encompassing the wrist.
Just as by betting on the sapphire cabochon and setting foot in the field of jewelry,Cartier Replica and replica rolex has deliberately covered the waters,
affirming its great freedom vis-à-vis the genre,offering a watch that is also a piece of jewelry.–or a jewel that is also a watch.