When watchmakers go all out to push horological boundaries, from IWC Schaffhausen’s 45-million-year moonphase to Bovet’s daylight saving world timer
Luxury maisons showcase extreme engineering feats through their complex timepieces that include intricate designs and groundbreaking technology
This year – arguably more than most – saw brands push the absolute boundaries of mechanical capability. Ordinarily, brands need little occasion to release complicated pieces; any release of a moonphase, tourbillon, plural barrels/escapements, chronographs, perpetual calendar, retrograde, etc, is special enough.
However, rare is the year that sees a new world’s thinnest watch, as well as a tourbillon piece thinner than a coin, a moonphase accurate to millions of years, a world timer that accounts for daylight savings, and more.
During Watches and Wonders week, brand after brand wowed the world with pieces like IWC Schaffhausen’s Portugieser Eternal Calendar, incorporating a method to create a moonphase that requires no recalibration for 45 million years, while Jaeger-LeCoultre gave us the Duometre Heliotourbillon Perpetual, which uses two barrels and independent geartrains in tandem with a three-axis tourbillon.
Around the same time, Bovet released the Recital 28 Prowess 1, developed over five years and featuring components to adjust a world timer for daylight savings time depending on when or where you are in the world.
De Bethune’s DB Kind of Grande Complication is grand indeed, a summary of the independent brand’s greatest hits, hosting a perpetual calendar, spherical moonphase, blued titanium tourbillon, jumping seconds and more, all in a double-sided rotating watch.
More recently, a storied house of high horology, Breguet, released the Classique Double Tourbillon Quai de l’Horloge 5345, which houses a double tourbillon with independent geartrains and a rotating time display.