The New Van Cleef & Arpels Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune

Van Cleef & Arpels approaches watchmaking as a medium for storytelling. The brand’s Poetic Complications line, launched in 2006, unites its high jewellery and artistic expertise with sophisticated mechanical movements to bring these stories to life. Expanding its Jour Nuit collection, Van Cleef adds a moon phase complication with on-demand animation inside the majestic Midnight Jour Nuit Phase de Lune.

Watchmaking at Van Cleef often draws on motifs and characters from its rich and imaginative jewellery universe. While fairies, ballerinas and butterflies are regular fare, the Maison also explores cosmic themes, such as the miniature planetarium featured on the Lady Arpels model, with a complication module built by renowned astronomical specialist Christiaan van der Klaauw. The Jour Nuit collection, launched in 2008 and extensively updated in 2024, relies on a 24-hour rotating disc to depict the transition between night and day. Catalogued in the brand’s Poetic Astronomy section, the Jour Nuit now incorporates a moon phase indicator, with a surprising and original twist.

Uniting the two complications, the case has expanded from the original 33 and 38mm Jour Nuit case sizes to a more masculine 42mm diameter. Crafted in 18k white gold with no trace of diamonds, the pusher at 8 o’clock on the case flank activates the automaton for the on-demand surprise. Van Cleef is renowned for its spectacular automata, which are gathered in its Extraordinary Objects collection.

The scintillating black Murano aventurine glass sky in the upper half of the dial reveals the 24-hour progression of night and day, represented by a flaming yellow gold sun – embellished with guilloché – and a radiant white mother-of-pearl moon flanked by tiny stars. Ingeniously integrated into the night sky, a round aperture cut into the black aventurine reveals the motion of a second, lower disc that tracks the satellite’s 29.5-day cycle.

The black aventurine was custom-made for Van Cleef and has bronze-toned crystalline inclusions that create a glittering cosmic backdrop. The lower half of the dial, crafted from mother-of-pearl with a Clous de Paris guilloché pattern and a hand-painted gradient transitioning from black to white, has a gentle curve that serves as a horizon.

However, the party trick here is the presence of an automaton. In addition to the day/night and moon phase indicators, the watch can display the current moon phase on demand. By activating the pusher, the dial rotates 360° for 10 seconds to reveal the precise state of the moon’s waxing and waning, even in daylight, without compromising timekeeping accuracy. Four years were required to create the on-demand animation.

The white gold caseback, engraved with the topography of the lunar surface, hides most of the in-house automatic 36-hour movement. The sapphire crystal set over the rotor depicts the cosmos as seen from the Moon and is decorated with miniature paintings of three planets and the Earth at the centre. The watch is paired with a black alligator strap and a white gold folding buckle. It retails for EUR 156,000. More information at vancleefarpels.com.