MONTBLANC – Villeret 1858 ExoTourbillon Rattrapante Limited Edition
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With the spectacular ExoTourbillon Rattrapante, the Montblanc Collection
Villeret 1858 presents a new masterpiece that can be described without
exaggeration as a world premiere in the world of watches. This model
offers an unprecedented combination of numerous horological
complications: a large balance positioned outside the tourbillon’s
rotating cage, a chronograph with split-second function, and a
three-dimensional regulator dial in gold and grand feu enamel.
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Grandes complications are one of the playing fields on which
Swiss watchmakers celebrate their globally unique status. This is a
terrain that can best be characterized as the “home stadium” for the
Montblanc Manufacture in
Villeret. The latest example of
Montblanc’s
expertise, which will debut at “Watches & Wonders” in Hong Kong,
adds new challenges to familiar and avidly coveted complications. Unlike
a conventional tourbillon,
Montblanc’s ExoTourbillon frees the large
screw balance from the burden of the rotating cage. Rather than offering
a mere chronograph, the new model encases a split-second chronograph
with two column-wheels and a classical double clamp. And instead of an
ordinary face, the watch’s dial is a fascinating three-dimensional arena
of massive gold and
grand feu enamel. This masterful combination
of the traditional watchmaker’s art and trailblazing innovations comes
with an 18 karat white gold case and a regulator dial. The exceptional
novelty shows the time in a second zone, includes a day/night indicator
and is manufactured in a limited edition of eighteen timepieces.
A complicated history
Rattrapante or split-second chronographs justifiably rank among the so-called
grandes complications.
It’s quite likely that the first split-second chronograph was built by
the Swiss watchmaker
Louis-Frédéric Perrelet, the grandson of the
watchmaker
Abraham-Louis Perrelet of Neuchâtel, who invented automatic
winding by means of an oscillating weight in the
1770s.
Louis-Frédéric
Perrelet presented his “time counter with double counter” in
1827. This
invention included two second-hands positioned one above the other: one
of them ran continually whenever the chronograph function was active;
the other could be momentarily halted at the push of a button to measure
an intervening interval. When this button was pressed again, the
temporarily halted hand would catch up and return to synchrony with its
companion. The French verb
rattraper means “to catch up”, so
Perrelet named his ingenious mechanism “
rattrapante”.
Other sources credit the invention of the split-second chronograph to
the Austrian watchmaker Joseph Thaddäus Winnerl, who settled in Paris in
1829. In
Perrelet’s device, after the
rattrapante-hand has been
halted and an intervening interval has been timed, a spiral spring draws
the hand back to its continually running counterpart. Winnerl, by
contrast, devised a construction with a heart-disc and a heart-lever
that exerts pressure to return the
rattrapante-hand to the
desired position. The system with a heart-disc, which is still in use
today, inspired the two Swiss watchmakers
Henri-Féréol Piguet and
Adolphe Nicole to create a zero-return mechanism for chronographs around
1862.
Great efforts for interim results
Ordinary chronographs define the upper limit of so-called “everyday” or “
petites complications”, but split-second chronographs are
grandes complications
in the truest sense of the phrase. Extraordinary mechanical complexity
and almost
70% more components than for a conventional chronograph
mechanism are needed to enable them to perform their useful function,
i.e. momentarily halting the split-second hand to indicate an
intervening interval without interrupting the ongoing measurement of an
elapsing interval by the chronograph’s elapsed-second hand per se. The
watchmakers’ efforts are all the more laborious for delicate steel
parts, which impose the utmost demands in manufacturing, finishing and
assembly. Fabrication at
Montblanc in
Villeret occurs almost entirely by
traditional manual craftsmanship, so significantly more time and labour
are required. All this prior to the “
mise en fonction”, when
hours or days of meticulous work are lavished on all functional parts of
the chronograph and split-second mechanism, which are finely adjusted
and, if necessary, delicately abraded. The “
mise en fonction” is
performed on the fully assembled mechanism: the desired function is
triggered and the interplay is scrutinized under a loupe; after noting
even the slightest irregularities, the watchmaker disassembles the
mechanism and finely tunes it, e.g. filing away a mere 1/100th of a
millimetre or making a miniscule shift in the position of a lever; the
movement is then reassembled and re-examined under magnification. This
process may need to be repeated five, six or more times until everything
interacts as expected from a movement made by
Montblanc in
Villeret.
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The result is a split-second chronograph movement that elicits sighs of
rapture from every watch aficionado who beholds it. When a connoisseurs
trigger the chronograph’s functions, many of them will peer through the
pane of sapphire crystal in the back of the case and admire the
column-wheel (which controls the basic chronographic functions), the
split-second column-wheel (which opens and closes the brake-clamps of
the split-second wheel), and the manually bevelled steel levers (which,
when the corresponding buttons are pressed, transfer their commands to
the column-wheels and thence to the gear-coupling, the zero-return
hearts and the brake-clamps). Also visible are the slender, elegantly
curved, steel springs that press the
rattrapante-clamps against the split-second wheel when the
rattrapante
button at “2 o’clock” is pressed to allow the user to read the duration
of an intervening interval. When this button is pressed again, the
clamps spread apart and the zero-return heart automatically returns the
split-second wheel to synchrony with the chronograph-wheel so that the
split-second hand re-joins the chronograph’s elapsed-seconds hand and
resumes running in unison with it.
Villeret: The adopted homeland of chronographs
Villeret, a small village in the Jura Region in the Canton of Bern, lies
almost exactly at the midpoint of an imagined line connecting the
watchmaking metropolises of Biel/Bienne and La Chaux-de-Fonds. The
cornerstone for the Minerva watch factory, which evolved into today’s
Montblanc Manufacture in
Villeret, was laid here in
1858. From its
earliest days, incredible dynamism proved that this business was
striving for a place among the leaders in its industry.
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Most of its competitors were mere “
établisseurs”, i.e. they
purchased components from external sources and assembled these parts to
produce complete watch movements. But the ambitious people at the
manufacture
in
Villeret had already begun developing their own calibres and
laboriously fabricating them by hand. These movements embodied the
highest degree of quality and were duly awarded prizes at international
industrial expositions. Production expanded to include chronograph
movements starting in
1887: these calibres were initially in larger
formats for use in pocket-watches, but were soon afterwards also made in
smaller sizes for wristwatches. Ongoing specialization in chronographs
led in the mid
1930s to the construction of
Calibre 19-14, which
included a balance that oscillated back and forth 100 times per second
and could accordingly measure elapsed intervals to the nearest 100th of a
second. Also built were split-second stopwatches, i.e. so-called
rattrapante
chronographs, which could measure intervening spans of time without
interrupting the measurement of an ongoing interval. Successfully used
at the Winter Olympics in
1936, these watches formatively contributed to
Minerva’s worldwide reputation.
The Patented Montblanc ExoTourbillon
Tourbillon escapements are another specialty of the master watchmakers
at the
Montblanc Manufacture in
Villeret. Especially when they’re
installed in watches with large and massy balances, these devices pose
the utmost demands on their makers’ skills and dexterity.
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The tourbillon was invented more than two centuries ago to counteract
the disturbing influence which the Earth’s gravitation exerts on the
steady oscillations of a watch’s balance. A tourbillon rotates the
entire escapement around the balance’s staff at an unvarying speed, thus
compensating for rate errors caused by slight eccentricities in the
centre of gravity of the balance and hairspring when the watch is in a
vertical position.
With the
Tourbillon Bi-Cylindrique, the Montblanc Collection Villeret 1858 again debuted an exclusive new timepiece that differs in several respects from everything previously seen in
haute horlogerie.
This is the first wristwatch with a tourbillon escapement that ticks
with two cylindrical hairsprings that have identical torques but unequal
diameters and that are concentrically positioned one inside the other.
This unprecedented device makes it a pleasure to reveal the mechanisms
and the mode of functioning of the legendary
heures mystérieuses display.
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Constant innovation, i.e. the unceasing quest for the new and the
unprecedented, is another indispensable element in Swiss watchmaking
tradition as practiced by
Montblanc in Villeret. This striving again
expresses itself in the patented
ExoTourbillon, where
Montblanc has
further optimized the ingenious tourbillon mechanism and made it even
more attractive. The Ancient Greek prefix “exo” means “outside”. This
exteriority is meant in two senses for the
ExoTourbillon from the
Montblanc Collection Villeret 1858. First, the rotating cage and the
escapement are positioned outside the movement’s plate per se and are
located, so to speak, alongside the movement. Second, the balance is
installed outside the rotating cage and oscillates on a different plane.
Timepieces in the
Montblanc Collection Villeret 1858 reap significant
benefits from this novel repositioning. The uncommonly large and massy
balance would have required a larger rotating cage if it had been
mounted inside a conventional tourbillon construction. But the
ExoTourbillon cage has a smaller diameter than the balance and rotates
beneath the gleaming golden screw balance.
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he balance is borne between two bridges, the upper of which has a
looped shape that recalls a horizontal figure-of-eight as the symbol of
infinity. The tourbillon rotates in a two-point bearing at the foot of
the axis.
Another exclusive feature of the
ExoTourbillon is the speed of its
rotations, each of which requires four minutes. Conventional tourbillons
typically complete one rotation per minute. Slowing the speed of the
rotations enhances the observer’s pleasure and requires less energy from
the barrel, but produces the same compensating effect as a speedier
tourbillon. The hairspring with an upward Phillips curvature at its
outer end oscillates at the traditional pace of 18,000 semi-oscillations
per hour (2.5 hertz) and thus enables this chronograph to measure
elapsed intervals to the nearest fifth of a second.
Reducing the tourbillon’s rotational speed by
75% yields considerable
energy savings. The rotating cage is smaller and has less mass, so its
rotary motion requires less energy as well. Furthermore, the balance is
freed from the weight of the rotating cage, which yields a further
reduction in its energy requirements.
Montblanc’s innovative device
requires more than
30%
less energy than conventional constructions, and this is advantageous
for the functioning of the split-second chronograph. Another essential
benefit ensues from separating the balance and the rotating cage: the
accuracy of the balance’s amplitude is improved because the balance is
not influenced by the inertia of the cage.
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Due to the
ExoTourbillon’s innovative configuration and despite the
greater mechanical complexity of the split-second chronograph, the
rattrapante
can function more precisely. It can at the same time rely on the same
barrel and the same power reserve as the basic chronograph movement.
These advantages would not have been possible in a chronograph that does
not rely on the patented
ExoTourbillon construction.
Thanks to a patented energy-saving mechanism in the
ExoTourbillon
Rattrapante, the precision of measurements of the overall elapsed time
and the intervening intervals by the
ExoTourbillon with chronograph
function is wed with a cleverly designed split-second function. With the
rattrapante mechanism as the most complicated form of
chronograph, the
Montblanc Manufacture in
Villeret demonstrates its
competence in the most challenging “freestyle” aspect of the
chronographic discipline.
Regulator dial with second time zone and day/night indicator
The
ExoTourbillon Rattrapante shows the ordinary time of day or night as
do regulator clocks, the faces of which give the main stage to the
minute-hand, while the hour-hand slowly circles its subdial at “6
o’clock”. This is a charming allusion to the historical long-case
regulator clocks that kept time more than two centuries ago in the
offices of shipping companies at major harbours, in the ateliers of
famous watch manufactories and in the ministries of the world powers.
This display is augmented on the dial of the
ExoTourbillon split-second
chronograph by an indicator for the time in a second zone, a
complication which enjoys increasingly strong popularity in our modern
era of unlimited mobility. The smaller dial at “6 o’clock” accordingly
bears two hour-hands: the upper and skeletonised hand shows the hour in
the current local time zone, while its underlying and greyish companion
indicates the hour in one’s home zone. These two hands sweep their
circles one above the other and indicate the same hour when the wearer
is in his home time zone. But when the watch’s owner travels to another
time zone, he presses the button at the “8” to reset the local-time
hour-hand in hourly increments. The little 24-hour display, which keeps
the user informed about the current time in his home zone, is located at
the right beside the subdial for the hours.
The grand theatre of haute horlogerie
The new ExoTourbillon Rattrapante doesn’t only spark enthusiasm because
of its globally unique combination of complications, but also thanks to
its fascinating face, which serves as a grand stage for unconventional
mechanisms. Rather than merely peering at a flat dial, the viewer’s gaze
enters into an elaborate and meaningful three-dimensional structure
that gives a sculptural quality to this timepiece. The excitement
already begins where there’s no dial at all, i.e. at the circular
aperture through which one can admire the ExoTourbillon.
The ExoTourbillon is positioned outside the movement plate per se, so
the partially openwork dial and the transparent pane of sapphire crystal
in the back of the case offer deep and rewarding insights. The
regulator dial is a multipart construction of massive gold. Its primary
surface is plated with rhodium and adorned with a
grainé décor, the area around the tourbillon is recessed slightly. It is surrounded by a flange (
réhaut)
that’s calibrated with a readily legible fifth-of-a-second scale for
the chronograph and that simultaneously shows the sequential minutes.
All other scales are crafted as grand
feu enamel appliques. The
applied scale for the continually running second-hand is at the “9”, the
chronograph’s counter for thirty elapsed minutes is at the “3”, and the
bipartite enamel applique at the “6” hosts the hours display in two
time zones and the 24-hour display for the home time. Grand
feu
enamel ranks among the oldest and most sophisticated techniques for
decorating precious timepieces. It’s also the longest-lasting
embellishment, which preserves its colour and gleam for centuries.
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Limited Edition in 18 Karat White Gold
Laborious handcraftsmanship, performed in accord with the authentic
Swiss watchmaking tradition and invested in each
ExoTourbillon
Rattrapante from the
Montblanc Collection Villeret 1858, naturally
limits the number of watches in the series of this
grandes complications
timepiece. The model is therefore available only in a strictly limited
edition of eighteen watches, each with an 18 karat white gold case. The
circular gold case measures 47 mm in diameter, is polished to a
high-gloss finish, and bears a highly domed sapphire crystal with
vertically descending flanks (
forme chevée) that optimally
complements the distinctive shape of the case. The screwed back includes
a sapphire crystal viewing window through which a connoisseur can
admire the full beauty of the elaborate mechanisms of this chronograph
with additional split-second function. The chronograph’s column-wheel is
visible at “6 o’clock”; the split-second column-wheel can be seen near
the split-second button; and between the two, an aficionado will find
the artistically shaped coupling-, braking- and heart-levers, as well as
the split-second clamps with their springs. The edges of these
components are bevelled, their surfaces are brushed, and their flanks
bear fine, elongated embellishments. The perfection of these elaborate
decorations is assured only when they’re crafted by hand. Their bright
gleam contrasts beautifully with Geneva waves on the bridges, glossy red
jewels, and gold-plated wheels.
This new collector’s item from the
Montblanc Collection Villeret 1858 is affixed to a black alligator-leather wristband equipped with a pronged buckle made of 18 karat white gold.
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Technical Specifications
(Ident. 109447)
Movement
Manufacture Calibre 16.61
Type of movement:
Hand-wound movement with split-second chronograph,
Small seconds, second time zone with 24-hour display and
separate
four-minute tourbillon
Chronograph:
Split-second chronograph mechanism with two column-wheels,
Rattrapante-clamps with springs at both sides and horizontal coupling
with sliding gear
Dimensions:
Diameter = 38.4 mm; height = 11.9 mm
No. of components: 411
Power reserve: 55 hours
Balance: Screw balance; diameter = 14.5 mm; 59 mgcm2
Frequency:
18,000 semi-oscillations per hour (2.5 hertz)
Tourbillon:
One rotation every four minutes
Hairspring: With Phillips terminal curvature
Plate:
Rhodium-plated nickel silver with circular graining on both sides,
hand-chamfered edges
Bridges:
Rhodium-plated nickel silver with côtes de Genève (Geneva
waves) recesses circular-grained on both
sides, hand-chamfered edges
Gear-train Wheels:
Gold-plated, circular-grained,
chamfered, diamond
hubs on both sides Pinions: polished faces and toothing, burnished
pivots
Displays (watch):
Hours in the first and second time zones at “6
o’clock”,
Minutes from the centre, small seconds at “9 o’clock”,
Day/night indication with 24-hour display at “4:30”
Displays:
Chronograph’s elapsed-seconds and split-second hand from the
centre, counter for thirty elapsed minutes at “3 o’clock”
Features
Case:
Limited edition of eighteen watches with 18 karat white gold
cases;
domed sapphire crystal (forme chevée), screwed back with pane of
sapphire crystal
Dimensions of case:
Diameter = 47 mm; height = 17.5 mm
Water resistance: To three bar (thirty metres)
Crown: With integrated chronograph button
Push-pieces:
At “2 o’clock” for the rattrapante function
and at “8 o’clock” to reset the time in a second zone
Dial:
18 karat gold with grainé décor,
Applied scales in grand feu
enamel on gold for the continually running seconds, the hours,
24-hour display and up to thirty elapsed minutes
Hands:
Blued steel, chronograph’s hand made of PfinodalTM
Wristband:
Hand-sewn alligator-leather strap,
Pronged buckle made of 18 karat white gold
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