Discover the definitive book on Bulgari’s rich relationship with horology in Bulgari: Beyond Time. The book’s sweeping perspective celebrates more than a century of Roman-inspired savoir faire, exhaustively chronicling the manufacture’s Swiss-Italian watchmaking achievements through hundreds of original, captivating images and fascinating conversations with the company’s greatest specialists.
A truly holistic exploration of the art of timekeeping, this title explores Bulgari’s iconoclastic past, present and future, amplifying a multitude of voices to highlight the underlying motive—what Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin describes as “giving form to emotion, especially when this emotion confronts time”—behind the house’s diverse signature watch collections, specifically High-Jewelry, Serpenti, Bvlgari Bvlgari, Octo and Grandes Complications. Antoine Pin, the managing director of Bulgari watches, expounds on this conviction, saying “products are never just simply products—to each is attached emotions and meanings, from those who create it to those who experience it.” To experience a Bulgari watch is more than just determining the day’s hours, minutes and seconds; it is also a discovery of a microcosm of movement which, as the book’s title suggests, goes beyond time.
Brilliantly tying the narrative together—both historically and emotionally—are insightful essays by an iconic group of the globe’s most celebrated individuals whose, personal achievements dovetail with the soul of each watch collection: Christie’s famed jewelry auctioneer Rahul Kadakia discusses gems; performance-art superstar Marina Abramović speaks serpents; Italian actor, screenwriter, and director Alessandro Gassmann reflects on Rome; nine-time Olympic gold-medalist track-and-field athlete Carl Lewis explains the art of breaking records; and award-winning conductor Lorenzo Viotti charts the mental soundtrack to complex musical moments.
The narrative concludes in a stimulating conversation moderated by noted futurist Adam Steel with the likes of industrial designer Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Antoine Pin, and Babin. The exchange is an invitation to envision what watches will look like to future generations. A future described by Bulgari as forging new emotional connections between centuries of human endeavor and watchmaking tradition with the possibilities of tomorrow, whether here—or beyond Earth itself.
