Material, Elements, Design

General

Today, a high-quality watch is mainly used for self-discovery, or appears as a distinctive element in self-identification.
The choice of a particular watch brand is determined almost exclusively by whether we think it fits our “type” or not. In other “identification aids”, such as the choice of car, many other criteria play a role. So it is of interest whether the vehicle meets our specific practical requirements. But the practical usability of the watch hardly influences our choice anymore. Nowadays, all watches show the time almost equally well, or would meet our requirements. The decision for a certain brand is almost always a question of style.
There are two aspects to this: The effect the watch has on ourselves and the effect the watch has on our environment. We use the watch both to identify and find ourselves and to project a certain image in our social environment. Ultimately, it is difficult to sharply separate these two aspects. With most watch brands, it is probably the message to those around you that is more important than the effect on you. With a Niveau élevé, the weighting could be different. Here, the aspect of the very personal work on oneself is also in the foreground, for which the watch should be a symbol and a stimulus. While the effect on ourselves is rather passive with other watches, it is hopefully active with a Niveau élevé. The change of mind and the attempt to realign one’s own time and life are already meant seriously! Of course, the watch also radiates some messages to its surroundings: The beauty in the simplicity of the design; the completely new and unusual in the expression – especially through the three-dimensionality of the watch; the exclusivity through its low distribution density; the special flair through the intellectual, philosophical orientation; these are all elements that have an effect not only on the wearer but also on those around him. But all the individual facets of the watch, whether design elements, materials, whether combinations of colour and form, type of movements, etc., everything is coordinated to ensure that the watch has its effect on the wearer, which is its most important function.
Since we at Niveau élevé question a lot and try to take little for “granted”, we naturally also question the mechanism of how a watch “expresses” something, how it conveys a certain aspect or trait. Let’s take “beauty”. Beauty is a concept that is already very difficult to define. We all know what is meant by this. But defining exactly what beauty is should not be easy for us. Ultimately, behind the concept of beauty there is a certain vibration, a very specific sensation that touches us pleasantly, that engages us, that fascinates us, that attracts us. However, when we try to define this vibration, we only use those elements that give us this vibration. We speak of harmony in proportions, harmony of colours, etc. But these are all just those windows through which we let a little bit of beauty into our consciousness. The balance in colour, form, movement etc. are only the door openers for the vibration of beauty, are only the triggers for our consciousness to open up to the vibration of “beauty” and to enjoy it.
Beauty, wisdom, knowledge, clarity, self-awareness, actuality, value, directness, novelty, originality, profundity, perfection, these are all abstract concepts that have their actual roots on other levels that are “abstract” for us and do not originate from this physical universe structured according to place and time. Beauty is not spatially structured. It has no length, no width or height, no weight and no extension or any coordinates. It has no specific time duration, but always manifests itself where a consciousness opens itself to it. In order for our consciousness to open to the vibration of beauty, we usually need “triggers” such as a beautiful face, beautiful architecture, a beautiful landscape, etc. We use “mediators” that bridge us to that “something” that emanates the vibration of beauty. We use “mediators” that bridge us to that “something” that emanates the vibration of beauty. In most cases we confuse the “triggers”, the “bridges”, the “mediators” of the subtle vibrations, or sensations, with the sensations themselves. The feeling of beauty is a very specific sensation that is not actually directly connected to the beautiful object we admire. The consciousness of a British manager may feel the vibration of beauty at the sight of an emaciated, tall, slender model, while the consciousness of a South Indian traffic policeman may feel the sensation of the same vibration at the sight of a rather plump female figure. Beauty is therefore not bound to anything absolute, but lies, as the saying goes, “in the eye of the beholder”.
The painter whose paintings fetch the highest prices at auction today, Vincent Van Gogh, was only able to sell one painting during his lifetime, and that only to his own brother. His sense of beauty, which is fully shared by high society today, was not accessible to his contemporaries. They needed a completely different “trigger” for the same impression. The difference in consciousness was so stark that Van Gogh, not accepted and understood by the general public, impoverished and outcast, took his own life, while today none of his paintings are auctioned for less than tens of millions. Objects or situations trigger sensations in us that actually do not necessarily have to trigger these sensations. It’s more like an appointment, that certain situations convey a very specific sensation.
Let us note, then, that in conveying an impression that relates to an abstract concept, our consciousness mixes up, or even confuses, the actual vibration, the sensation, with the trigger for the sensation. But we should actually separate these two instances. The perception of the specific sensation of beauty, simplicity, clarity, harmony, daring, originality, etc. is not structurally linked to the trigger and stands for itself. If we were in full control of our consciousness, we could perceive the Abstract Sensations without triggers, anchored in themselves, so to speak, or we could manage to qualify anything and everything as a trigger and would then perceive, for example, everything we see as “beautiful”.

With the “normal” abstract concepts, such as just illuminated, we are still on relatively solid ground. There is a current sense of time that more or less clearly defines what the triggering elements are for the abstract concepts we know. But the moment we aim for a sense of “self”, we leave the familiar terrain and take another step away from the normal mechanism of consciousness. Because while sensations, feelings and thoughts have a clear theme that can be defined or at least described, the perception of one’s “self” is behind these feelings and thoughts. It is the self that “perceives”. It is not the “perception” that we focus on, it is precisely that which stands behind this perception and which registers the perception. It is what perception perceives. Normally, this instance always remains hidden in the darkness of our consciousness. We only feel our perception, only the thought or feeling flickers on the inner monitor of consciousness. The spectator who watches what is happening on the inner screen remains hidden, we do not become aware of it.

But this is exactly what the philosophy of Niveau élevé is aiming at. It is the self, the own I, which we want to perceive. Wir möchten in unserem Leben selbst vorkommen, nicht nur die Geschehnisse. So we have to manage to bring the viewer out of the darkness of the auditorium, or to direct the light of consciousness through perception to the entity that feels. The self, the “I”, must learn to grasp itself directly. Of course, one must not make the mistake of confusing one’s own ego with one’s character traits, one’s thoughts, one’s feelings. If we get caught in the web of the inner canvas on which our lives play out, we again perceive only “our idea” of ourselves, not ourselves.

To describe the perception of that which perceives our sensations is almost impossible. That’s why we don’t even want to try. Instead, we perform the very beautiful image from the Mundakapa Upanishad, which some 2000 years ago tried to show the dichotomy of consciousness, divided into the instance of “involved perception” and the instance of the self, which is not involved in perception, and distantly observes the involved part of our consciousness.

“Like two golden birds perched in closest friendship on the same tree, the ego and the self dwell in the same body. The former eats the sweet and sour fruits from the tree of life, while the latter looks on inwardly detached.”
– Mundaka-Upanishad, III.1.1

But how do we manage to create a trigger for self-knowledge, for self-awareness, with a physical object like a watch? The answer is: we don’t succeed at all. It is always only the will and the decisiveness of the individual who, with hard inner work, can free himself from the entanglements of his consciousness in everyday events and discover those inner expanses that enable one to experience oneself directly. In order to have the direct self-awareness, we have to go beyond the indirect one. We need to be able to see ourselves no longer as our position in society, no longer only as part of a comparison, no longer through the evaluation of our fellow human beings. In order to see into the depths of the water and to recognise the bottom, the surface must be absolutely motionless. To do this, we have to free ourselves from the attachment to our obligations, to our desires and plans, we have to create an inner vastness and emptiness, an inner free space, in which we then feel our own self. It may not be important to know what the self feels like, what it looks like. When the surface of the water smoothes out and becomes motionless, we naturally recognise the bottom in the depths, even without having a preconceived idea of it. The only important thing is to give up the attachment to the unimportant events of everyday life and banish them from the inner canvas. Only then can we perceive ourselves.
What assistance then can a Niveau élevé give in this inner work? It can do perhaps three things:
a). Through its general symbolism, it can give us an indication of how we can change our lives and our view of ourselves through a different adjustment of our priorities.
b). It can remind us of our purpose every time we look at the clock, every time we read the time.
c). It can perhaps carry us away through the enthusiasm of the beauty, the high quality, the concept and the very finely crafted individual symbols and materials used, into a desire to set out into the “other”, into a journey towards the unknown self.
Both the ancient Egyptians and the Tantrics of ancient India were masters at using symbols to bridge to those worlds that are the origin of all “abstract concepts” and further to that level where we find our Self. Probably the greatest “gateways” or “mediators” for the manifestation of abstract values were the pyramids, perhaps the smallest rough diamonds in ancient India, to which a symbolic meaning was attributed.
The individual symbols and analogies of the Niveau élevé clocks have already been sufficiently described in the book on the philosophy of time and in this book. In the following of this chapter we will now explain our guidelines for quality and standard of design and material used in our watches.

Diamonds

Almost every Niveau élevé watch is constructed with at least one diamond. The diamond is probably the most mystical component that could be used in a watch. Diamonds are already unbeatable by any other material in the number of their physical superlatives. Diamond is the hardest known natural material. It is the best conductor of heat and it has the highest optical refractive index. For three millennia, the diamond came only from India. In 1729, the first rough diamond outside India was found – in Brazil. Until then, all diamonds came from the land of the Vedas and Upanishads, of Tantra and Yoga, from the land where Hinduism and Buddhism originated. In ancient times and in the early Middle Ages, the diamond had such an important social significance in India that there was a separate profession of diamond experts who enjoyed the highest reputation. Diamonds were the most expensive and coveted commodity and were worn by kings, nobles and wealthy merchants not primarily as jewellery, but primarily for its various effects on health, happiness and other areas.
The diamond is also an excellent medium to store value. No new “primary deposits” of diamonds have been discovered in the last 15 years. Existing deposits are now largely depleted and it is foreseeable that in the not too distant future, rough diamond production will be only a fraction of what is produced today. In 2006, about 180 million carats of rough diamonds were still mined worldwide. Today, annual production is only between 120 and 130 million carats, and it continues to fall year by year. It is therefore foreseeable that diamonds have a price explosion ahead of them. Since diamonds are the biggest cost factor in most models of Niveau élevé watches, a steady price increase is therefore not only inevitable for the new models, but also the second-hand watches are likely to increase in value.
But the diamond is also ideal for timekeeping on the watch for very practical reasons. Since the diamond is the densest optical medium, a straight incident light beam is “totally reflected” twice at the back of a brilliant-cut diamond. This means that 100 % of the incident light is thrown back from the stone into the eye of the observer. Thus, a brilliant reflects light better than a mirror. This, of course, increases the visibility of the timings immensely. It’s sometimes difficult to see the time division well with smaller watches, but this is no problem at all with the watches from Niveau élevé. In the play of light of the Niveau élevé watches also lies a fascinating feature with a very beautiful symbolism. In conventional watches, the time division, i.e. the numerals, is usually dark on a light background. In diamonds, the 12 points of timing light up like little fires or lamps. The light ratio is reversed. Not only is the time division raised to the foreground, above the hands, but the time division also glows and sparkles.

Fancy diamonds

A special feature of our watches are fancy coloured diamonds. In all models that actually go on sale, coloured diamonds are always colour-fast, i.e. natural fancy-coloured stones. For very expensive colours such as pink or blue, the watch or jewellery always comes with a certificate from one of the three major international grading institutes (GIA, HRD or IGI). For the colours of the diamonds that are not quite so rare and therefore not quite so expensive, we dispense with an elaborate separate certificate and colour and other details can be taken from the watch passport/warranty book. While all the white stones in the watches are cut in a twelve-cut, i.e. according to the time structure, the coloured diamonds have the usual brilliant cut. Since a large part of the value of a watch with natural-coloured diamonds lies in the fancy-coloured stones, we prefer to use the common cut here so as not to link the value of the brilliant-cut diamonds to a specific concept and thus limit their universality.
For the white brilliants, princess-cut or diamond baguettes, we generally use the best qualities. This means from G upwards to D for colour and from VS to Lupenrein for purity.

Special cuts of the diamonds at Niveau élevé

For the white diamonds, we do not use brilliant cuts or so-called “single cuts” or “octagonal cuts”, as the watch industry generally does. Single cuts do not have the usual 56 facets plus table, like the normal brilliant cut, but have eight facets plus table on the top of the stone and eight facets on the bottom. The reason why these stones are so popular in the watch industry is the fact that with very small brilliant-cut diamonds, due to the many, extremely tiny facets, the light is split up into the smallest individual rays to such an extent that the human eye no longer perceives the individual flashes of light as such, but only perceives the stones in a general “gritty” light. While brilliant-cut diamonds have 56 facets plus table, single-cuts are only cut with 16 facets plus table and thus sparkle more than brilliant-cut diamonds in the size range below 1 millimetre, depending on the light intensity. We have replaced these single cuts by Niveau élevé with a special cut with 24 facets plus table. The 12-facet division (twelve facets on the upper side, twelve on the lower side) corresponds to the division of time in a 12-facet rhythm and also results in a much more even and harmonious picture for Pavee-framed surfaces.

For the stones in the dial and case, we have replaced the brilliant cut with one of our self-developed special cuts, which in most cases also has a slightly reduced number of facets (2 x 12 facets on the upper part and 2 x 12 facets on the lower part). In addition, the angles are changed in such a way that the dispersion of the brilliant-cut variations increases. This is the splitting of light into its spectral colours. When the special cuts of the élevé level sparkle, stronger flashes of red and blue light are therefore visible than would be the case with normal brilliant cuts.

The great innovation of Niveau élevé diamonds, however, lies in the hidden light patterns of the diamonds, which become visible through the colour separating loupe. As described in chapter 11, Niveau élevé has developed and registered eight different special cuts for protection, with very different light patterns that are applied depending on the model of the watch. The light patterns always symbolise a sun or a star (the sun is also a star), with the light streaming out, bundled in a rhythm of 12. A special magnifying glass is supplied with every watch constructed with white round diamonds, which makes these marvels of diamond cutting art visible.

Gemstones

Niveau élevé not only uses diamonds in its watches, but also likes to use jewels from the Gemstone sector. Since the rubies, sapphires, emeralds or other gemstones must in any case have a precision that is not available when purchased on the international jewellery market, all coloured stones are cut in the in-house polishing factory in Pondicherry. This guarantees that the stones are genuine, that they are untreated and that they are of the highest quality in colour, purity, cut, etc. Special cuts are also used for the coloured jewels, which are built up in a rhythm of 12, i.e. in a time rhythm. However, as the colour stones have a completely different refractive index compared to the diamond, the play of light with the colour separating loupe is not the same. The fact that the jewels are generally coloured also affects the effectiveness of the colour-separating loupe. We therefore sometimes also use the normal brilliant cuts or other cut patterns than for our white diamonds.

Cypher glasses

The watch glasses are actually the heart of the Niveau élevé. The character of the watch itself, and the individual design of each watch, is primarily shaped by the dial. The glasses are always multi-layer glasses. The cover glass, i.e. the one on top of the glass sandwich, is always a sapphire glass. The lower one is normally a mineral glass. Because the dial glass is a laminated glass, our multi-layered glass is a kind of bulletproof glass that is extremely strong and almost unbreakable. The scratch-resistant sapphire crystal as part of the bulletproof glass makes the watch glass almost indestructible.
Waterproofness
All watches from Niveau élevé are waterproof. Waterproofness is usually expressed in diving depth. An atmosphere water pressure density would mean that the watch is still tight up to a depth of 10 metres under water. Three atmospheres of pressure density would correspond to 30 metres of water depth. Like other high-quality watches, the Niveau élevé watches are tested to three atmospheres of water pressure density. This means that the watches do not allow water to penetrate the case up to a depth of 30 metres under water. De facto, however, this is a theoretical value that cannot always be guaranteed for all individual items in every situation. It is the value that the clock has when tested after assembly. In the course of wear, the watch may develop signs of wear, such as the wear of a seal in the crown. Watches that are labelled as water-resistant to a depth of 30 m are not always water-resistant to such a depth in an emergency. This is the same for the watches of Niveau élevé. All Niveau élevé watches are tested to three atmospheres of pressure density after assembly.
Movements
Mechanical movements, which we use, are made by the Swiss company Eta, quartz movements are made by the Swiss company Ronda. You can find out which movement is installed in the respective watch from the warranty booklet. Niveau élevé tries in every case to guarantee perfect functioning of the watch and an absolutely precise time function. However, we deliberately refrain from making a big show when we ask about the movements. Whether the watch is fitted with a highly complicated manufacture movement with all kinds of extras or a Swiss precision movement from Eta or Ronda will usually have no effect on the time function of the watch, but is rather a marketing matter. Other factors, such as the concentration and care of the assemblers when assembling the clock, probably play a much more decisive role. The reliability and precision of the Eta and Ronda movements are legendary, their market penetration in the Swiss luxury watch sector unchallenged, and we are delighted to be able to work with these two traditional companies.

Bracelets

For the bracelets used at Niveau élevé, as for all other parts, attention is paid to the highest quality. The precious metal straps are made by the market leaders who also work for the best of the best in luxury watchmaking and are specially designed and matched to the case for each model. The leather, rubber or textile straps are also made especially for our watches and every detail is tailored to the special design of the watch and the case. We use natural rubber for rubber straps, not synthetic rubber.

Metals – Alloys

For metals, we generally use the best possible variant in each category. The high quality of the watch is not anchored to the metal of the case at Niveau élevé. Even the most exclusive watches with the rarest and most beautiful coloured diamonds are preferably delivered in stainless steel, not only in platinum or gold. Stainless steel, 18 carat gold (750) in all colour alloys and platinum are available as standard for all models. However, since the high quality of the Niveau élevé watches is rather given by the special diamonds, we can confidently dispense with a precious metal alloy as a carrier of exclusivity. With stainless steel, we only use the best possible variant, because here too, of course, there are many possible variations. Generally speaking, stainless steel has the advantage over gold and platinum that it is more scratch-resistant, since gold alloys and platinum are very soft materials. The emphasis of Niveau élevé on special diamonds, i.e. either white stones with a 12-cut specially adapted to the time, or natural-coloured brilliant-cut diamonds, defines the character of the brand much more meaningfully than a precious metal case. The lightness of a stainless steel watch is also an advantage over gold or platinum watches.
Niveau élevé likes to use platinum or gold in areas of the watch where scratch resistance is not an issue, such as for the inner bezel in some series of the Lucidity model for the bottom of the interior of the watch, i.e. the background of the hands, for indexes or numerals or even for crowns.

The Niveau élevé development department is currently also working on metals that are still relatively unknown in the watch sector, e.g. tungsten, crystalline osmium or other special materials. For the watches in which these materials are used, you will find a corresponding description in the warranty book.