Eros the Timemaster seduces time in celebration of life

In the age of the Enlightenment, people knew how to reconcile the apprenticeship of punctuality with that of sexuality.

This gold and enamel watch, baptised "The missionary", was created by Piguet Meylan in Geneva in the early 19th century. It escaped the mass destruction of risqué watches following the manufacturing ban decreed in 1817. (Private collection)

Nothing is more paradoxical than an erotic watch. Horology measures and celebrates time. Eroticism opposes it by ensuring life's perpetual motion. This couple, clandestinely savouring the delights of free love, was formed just after the 17th century. At that time, watchmaking mechanics could set in motion many different parts inside the dial cases; ribald cabinotiers immediately saw how they could turn these new inventions to their advantage.

Details in full colour and live motion

It dawned on them that the coital act could be represented by the minute-repeater movements. For once, technological prowess yielded to the caprices of pleasure.

At the same time, enamellists also reached the peak of their artistry. Thus the technical skills of the former combined with the artistry of the latter to spawn impure wonders: enamelled erotic watches.

The most tangled positions, the most inventive fellatios - a great classic of horological eroticism -, the most collective copulations were thus illustrated in full colour and live motion in every detail.

Strangely enough, London-the-Prude and Geneva-the-Austere lay at the centre of the trade launched by Eros the Timemaster. From the 18th century onwards, Great Britain provided the risqué Genevan craftsmen with a lucrative market. The finest pieces set out from the English capital for Asia so that the maharajas and maharanis could find inspiration in these mechanical Kama Sutras which not only fired their imaginations but also told the time!

The French - true to their fiery Latin reputation - were equally fond of these little machines with their bawdy tick-tock.

But the prigs and the religious fanatics - almost always one and the same - led a fierce campaign against these libertine automata. In 1817, the Genevan government issued an ayatollah-like fatwa outlawing the manufacture of these licentious items. Worse still: these prudes destroyed en masse every erotic watch that fell under their hammer blows. Some nevertheless escaped the massacre. And they were slipped out of sight with rapture and terror in equal measure. Defying the ban gave these very discreet jewels an additional lustre. And a very high price!

Honourable gifts for maids of honour

And yet, during the 18th century, erotic watches had become an everyday feature of Genevan life. Foresighted parents even went to the trouble of placing them in the bridal basket as gifts for the maids of honour. A felicitous gesture, at a time when people knew how to reconcile the apprenticeship of punctuality with that of sexuality. People back then had grasped the importance of performing the carnal act spiritually, wittily, and without hypocrisy.

Because Eros the Timemaster reminds us of fundamental truths. It is pointless to kill Time. It should be seduced so that it is humanised, stripped of its inexorable and despairing character, made aware that the successes of its queen, Death, are mere transient shadows and that life always reaches its end by the strangest of detours.

By drawing from his fob a watch featuring erotic figures, the honest Enlightenment man was surely conscious of time fleeing towards the grave while simultaneously allowing himself fantasies that would feed his urge to live and to make love.

Jean-Noël Cuénod