Carl F. Bucherer harnesses its peripheral winding system to power the new Manero Peripheral Perpetual Calendar, one of this Swiss brand’s more complicated designs.
The new Carl F. Bucherer Manero Peripheral Perpetual Calendar.
The watchmaker nicely melds a perpetual calendar and a moon-phase display on the dial of the new watch, which is offered within a luxurious 41.6mm by 11.73mm rose gold case.
In a more traditional style than we typically see from Carl F. Bucherer, the new watch allows easy-to-read displays showing the leap year, date, day, month and moon phase. The latter display is particularly appealing, with hand-engraved rose gold moons on a disc of glittering aventurine.
And thank to this brand’s unusual in-house movement design, the back of the watch offers its own visual pleasures, notably a rotor that spins around the edge of the movement.
On this CFB A2055 caliber, a bidirectional oscillating weight turns on three frictionless ceramic ball-bearings housed in shock-absorbing mountings.
Suchperipheral oscillating weights are still rare, even among Carl F. Bucherer’s peers in high-end watchmaking, and they always catch my eye when employed as they offer a truly unobstructed view of the finely finished manufacture automatic movement.
Carl F. Bucherer is offering the Manero Peripheral Perpetual Calendar with a choice of black, green and taupe dial hues, each displaying a handsome sunray brushed center and opaline index track.
All feature matching calfskin straps with a ‘Milky Way’ texture, quick release system and an 18-karat rose gold pin-lock folding clasp.
The limited edition model features a rose-hued dial.
A limited edition model (of eight pieces) with a rose-hued dial is also available only at Bucherer 1888 retail locations.
Frederique Constant celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary and the fifteenth anniversary of its Manufacture tourbillon with a limited-edition version of its Manufacture Highlife Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar.
The new Frederique Constant Manufacture Highlife Tourbillon Perpetual Calendar.
The Geneva-based watchmaker will release thirty-five examples of the new 41mm by 12.65mm pink gold watch.
With a contemporary design, the watch melds both of its namesake technical complications within a blue dial, carefully adapting the upper half the tourbillon aperture to fit alongside the calendar displays.
This shape differs from the classically round aperture found within the watchmaker’s existing tourbillon models.
On the dial you’ll find the day, date and month indications at the 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions. Each shows its indication with a hand, though the month/years display (at the 12 o’clock position) requires two hands. In addition to the month hand, another hand indicates leap years.
Frederique Constant’s characteristic Highlife globe pattern subtly underpins the watch’s dial, complete with map-like meridians and parallels. Each dial sector is finished slightly differently in either satin or sunburst patterns to enhance readability.
Frederique Constant’s own tourbillon regulator is fit with the watch’s seconds hand, which rotates just above the balance wheel, a series of blued screws and a gold-finished baseplate. Artisans engrave each plate with the watch’s individual serial number.
The movement here is Frederique Constant’s own FC-975 Manufacture caliber, which the watchmaker decorates with circular grained and Côtes de Genève finishes. The movement boasts a 38-hour power reserve and water resistance to 30 meters.
Frederique Constant supplies the watch with interchangeable leather and rubber straps, allowing its owner to easily switch between traditional and sportierlooks.
Movement: FC-975 in-house automatic caliber, perpetual calendar, tourbillon, 38-hour power reserve, 28,800 alt/h.
Case: 41mm by 12.65mm brushed and polished rose gold three-part with
scratch-resistant and anti-reflective convex sapphire crystal. See-through case back. Water-resistant to 30 meters.
Dial: Blue with matte finishing and globe pattern embossed in the center, rose gold plated applied indexes filled with white luminous treatment, rose-gold-plated hour and minute hands filled with white luminous treatment, date counter with rose-gold-plated hand. Heart Beat opening at 6 o’clock with 60-seconds tourbillon, rose-gold-plated seconds hand, day counter at 9 o’clock with rose-gold-plated hand. Month and (leap) year counter at 12 o’clock with rose gold plated hands.
Strap: Navy blue alligator leather with nubuck finishing. Also included: additional navy blue rubber strap.
Citizen marks its ongoing partnership with ispace’s Hakuto-R space program with a new AttesaEco-Drive watch encased in 42mm of Super Titanium, which Hakuto-R also uses on the legs of the project’s lunar lander.
The latest Citizen Attesa Hakuto-R Collaboration includes a galaxy-styled dial.
Citizen then treats the case and the matching Super Titanium bracelet with Duratect DLC to both darken and protect them.
The glittery dial on the new Attesa underscores the watch’s galactic theme. Citizen has devised a beautiful purple and blue hue, which it created from recycled polycarbonate printed with structural color ink developed by the FujiFilm Corporation.
The dial reflects and refracts light and features silvery accents that echo the look of glittering stars and nebulae.
To emphasize the limited edition nature of the watch, Citizen engraves the Hakuto-R logo on the back of the all-black case back.
As the Citizen Attesa Hakuto-R is a radio-controlled watch powered by light, it is among the most user friendly analog world timer/perpetual calendars available. Adding to that ease is Citizen’s “Direct Flight,” a name for the easy adjustment of the time and date in twenty-six times zones with just a turn of the crown.
Citizen will make 2,700 Attesa Hakuto-R Collaboration watches, each priced at $1,495.
Here, we’ll look at the latter model with its visually transformative new dial hue.
The newest A. Lange & Söhne 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar, now in a white gold case with a pink gold dial.
The 1815 Rattrapante Perpetual Calendar’s dimensions, movement and technical details remain as impressive they were when the piece debuted ten years ago when it won the Grand Complications award at the 2013 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie in Geneva.
We’ve seen the dial color and case metal combination here previously when the watchmaker offered the design on its Datograph Perpetual Tourbillon (2019) and its Lange 1 Perpetual Calendar (2021).
The look is almost vintage, especially when eyeing the dial’s very traditional railway minute scale and its classical four-subdial layout.
And this make perfect sense since A. Lange & Söhne designers meant to recall the dials of earlier Lange pocket watches. Thus, we see the combined calendar at the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions while the left subsidiary dial shows the date and day ofthe week and the right displays the month and leap year.
At the same time, we see the expressive moon phase display within the subsidiary seconds display at 6 o’clock and theminute counter and power-reserve indicator at the top of the dial.
The beautiful display continues on the back of the watch with a clear view of the watchmaker’s spectacular manual-wind L101.1 movement with its clearly visible rattrapante mechanism and superior finishing. Stunning.
New Ref. 5224R is a Calatrava model equipped with the Travel Time dual time zone function and a 24-hour display.
Arriving amid a strong set of debuts, including a highly jeweled Grandmaster Chime and the first annual calendar within the Aquanaut Luce collection (to be covered in upcoming posts), this newest adaptation of Patek Philippe’s Travel Time dual-time display is paired with an original display of local time and home time via two center hands turning on a 24-hour circle.
Patek Philippe has used similar 24-hour displays, but most have been seen on watches from the distant past. In the early twentieth century Patek Philippe made a series of Chronometro Gondolo watches for the Brazilian retailer Gondolo & Labouriau.
But for the new watch, Patek Philippe flipped the original design. Instead of placing the noontime indication at the more traditional 6 o’clock position, Patek Philippe opts to update (and, to many, simplify) the display by placing noon at the top of the dial where, it seems, more wearers look when checking the time.
In another nod to simplicity and aesthetics, Patek Philippe has also replaced the traditional in-case correction pushers for local time with a new patented correction system that allows the user to pull out the crown.
When pulled out to the intermediate position, the local time can be adjusted backwards and forwards in one-hour increments.
To accomplish these new features, Patek Philippe built new caliber 31-260 PS FUS 24H. The movement is an update to Patek Philippe’s 31-260 ultra-thin self-winding base caliber from 2011, which here includes a 24-hour mechanism and a Travel Time mechanism.
In 2021, Patek Philippe further enhanced the initial caliber (then placed into the In-Line Perpetual Calendar Reference 5236P-001) with a new operating frequency of 4 Hz, a twenty per cent increase in barrel-spring torque, a mini-rotor in platinum and a reduction wheel that uncouples the self-winding mechanism when the watch is being manually wound.
The watch’s 42mm rose-gold case nicely complements a sharp-looking blue dial that Patek Philippe has set with contemporary, high-relief rose gold numerals, hour markers and five-minute cabochons.
The watch is also notable for its generous use of luminous material within the rose-gold, syringe-type hands, the hour markers and the numerals.
Price: $57,366.
More New in 2023
As noted above, Patek Philippe for 2023 adds an annual calendar to the Aquanaut Luce to create Annual Calendar Reference 5261R-001 ($61,506), the first annual calendar in the Aquanaut collection.
Aquanaut Luce Annual Calendar Reference 5261R-001.
Finished with a very nice blue-gray dial and attached to a matching strap, the 39.9mm rose gold watch enriches Patek Philippe’s range of complicated ladies’ watches.
Also for 2023, Patek Philippe adds a blue-gray sunburst dial and a navy-blue grained calfskin strap to its distinctive Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph Reference 5924G-001 ($75,699) and adds a khaki green lacquered dial to the Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph Reference 5924G-010 ($79,699).
Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph Reference 5924G-001.Calatrava Pilot Travel Time Chronograph, Reference 5924G-010.
Patek Philippe also updates its Calatrava references 6007G-001, 6007G-010 and 6007G-011 with a new modern dial style featuring black dials and three types of finish with an embossed carbon pattern.
Calatrava reference 6007G-001, one of three colorful updates to the series.
Each also receives new color accents in on their respective dials and straps: yellow (6007G-001), red (6007G-010) or sky blue (6007G-011). Each is priced at $37,850.
Patek Philippe also expanded its range of watches for women with the new Calatrava self-winding Reference 4997/200R-001, a rose gold, diamond-set watch ($38,441) now sporting a rich purple wave dial pattern created by fifty layers of translucent lacquer.
Pictures don’t do this dial justice as the lacquer finish here is extraordinary.
All feature matching calfskin straps with a ‘Milky Way’ texture, quick release system and an 18-karat rose gold pin-lock folding clasp.
This shape differs from the classically round aperture found within the watchmaker’s existing tourbillon models.
The dial reflects and refracts light and features silvery accents that echo the look of glittering stars and nebulae.
Adding to that ease is Citizen’s “Direct Flight,” a name for the easy adjustment of the time and date in twenty-six times zones with just a turn of the crown.
