The seven watchmaking wonders of Geneva

A breath of fresh air blew across Lake Geneva for the 2024 edition of the Geneva Watch Days, which this year brought together around fifty independent watchmaking houses. Technical prowess, unbridled creativity, masterpieces of craftsmanship… Our selection of seven new products.

The most historic: Breitling Perpetual Calendar Chronograph

The brand with the winged B is celebrating its 140th anniversary with three anniversary editions beating to the rhythm of a brand new movement entirely designed and assembled in-house. This B19 complex is the first perpetual calendar caliber stamped Bretling. Equipped with a complete calendar and a moon phase, it automatically corrects months of twenty-eight, thirty and thirty-one days, as well as leap years. Enough to guarantee optimal operation for almost a century, without any major adjustment, with a comfortable power reserve of around 96 hours. On the back, a solid gold rotor is decorated with an engraving of the Montbrillant factory, the historic manufacturer. This caliber integrates three flagship models of the house in limited series (€55,000): the Premier B19 Datora 42 in red gold with the Arabic numerals, the contrasting minute scale and the square pushers of the original 1943 model; the Super Chronomat created in 1983 for the Italian national aerobatic team, the Frecce Tricolori; and, above all, the iconic Navitimer Perpetual Calendar chronograph (our photo), once adopted by airline pilots, with its integrated slide rule.

The most extreme: Classic Double Tourbillon Quai de l’Horloge 5345 by Breguet

In 1801, Abraham-Louis Breguet unveiled a pocket watch equipped with a tourbillon, compensating for the Earth’s gravity in order to provide greater precision. This year, the house that bears his name is paying tribute to him with a demonstration of fine watchmaking expertise: an imposing 46 mm diameter rose gold piece, with a movement made up of 740 components. On the dial, admire the hypnotic dance of its two tourbillons. Their bar, fixed to a central plate, rotates every twelve hours, thus acting as an hour hand. For the occasion, the artisans of the manufacture have imagined a new guilloché, the “flinqué rayonnant”, visually reminiscent of regular sound waves. On the caseback, it took more than a hundred hours of work to engrave on the back of the movement the sketch seen from the sky of Abraham-Louis Breguet’s workshop, at 39, quai de l’Horloge, in Paris! A masterpiece of watchmaking craftsmanship offered at €835,000.

Most Distinguished: Daniel Roth Rose Gold Tourbillon

La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton continues its patient work of relaunching the Daniel Roth brand with a tourbillon with a double ellipse case in pink gold (priced at around €180,000) entirely developed by master watchmakers Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini, in collaboration with the famous guilloché workshop of Kari Voutilainen. An example of traditional elegance, the tourbillon positioned at 6 o’clock is here topped by a gradation of seconds in three zones that look like a fan. On the back of the case, we discover the DR001 caliber under a sapphire crystal, with bridges decorated with vertical Geneva stripes.

The most musical: Octo Roma Grande Sonnerie by Bulgari

This timepiece, presented as the most complex ever created by Bulgari, houses within it the queen of watchmaking complications, the minute repeater. Four hammers mark the passage of time – the hours and quarters, but also the hours, quarters and minutes, on demand – to a tune composed by conductor Lorenzo Viotti. This high-flying creation (around €900,000) reinvents the melody of gongs by adding the “tritone”, an interval characteristic of classical music. Equipped with a 45 mm titanium case, it displays a skeletonized dial in openworked metal and a hand-wound BVV800 movement (72-hour power reserve).

The most fun: H. Moser & Cie and Studio Underd0g

When the sleeping beauty H. Moser & Cie was bought by the Meylan family about ten years ago, who could have imagined that it would become one of the trendiest watch brands of the moment? It must be said that, in recent times, it has never hesitated to create a buzz, between its cheese watch, its red “Make Swiss Made Great Again” caps, or its Swiss Alp Watch which hijacked the design of the Apple Watch. This time, it’s time for a fruity collaboration with Studio Underd0g, an underground watchmaker appreciated by collectors. The H. Moser & Cie Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Passion Fruit (€80,000, our photo) features a perpetual calendar movement, with a purple sun-brushed dial and a Grand Feu enamel dial on an 18-carat yellow gold base. The Studio Underd0g X H. Moser & Cie Passion Project (€60,000) is a single-pusher chronograph with a luminous multi-layer dial in amber and purple gradient.

The most dreamlike: Classic Tourbillon Manufacture Aventurine by Frédérique Constant

Generally, the aventurine that covers watch dials refers to this material invented “by chance”, they say, in a workshop in Murano. At Frédérique Constant, on the other hand, it is natural aventurine, a variety of quartz, that forms the dial cut from a single piece of the Tourbillon Manufacture (€39,995). This limited edition of 36 pieces features a 39 mm white gold case, featuring the Heart Beat aperture invented by the brand at 6 o’clock.

La plus fine : ThinKing Prototype de Konstantin Chaykin

Despite the recent feats of Piaget (the 2 mm thickness of the Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon), Richard Mille (the 1.75 mm of the RM UP-01 Ferrari) and Bulgari (the 1.7 mm of the Octo Finissimo Ultra COSC), the ultimate watchmaker has apparently not yet been reached! The Russian Konstantin Chaykin presented a prototype in Geneva that is only 1.65 mm thick. Cut from a special steel, this extreme watch should weigh 13.3 grams. Its finesse also meant that an alligator and titanium strap was designed to suit it!