From time to time, Watchmakers like to free us from the temporal demands our timepieces can place upon us, because every now and then, we all need to lose track of time. In years gone by, independent watchmakers Andreas Strehler and Thomas Prescher created wristwatches that told time only on demand – to learn the current time, you had to press a button. In 2011, Hermès gave us Le Temps Suspendu, which kept time until the press of a button caused time to stop. This year, Richard Mille adds his own creative twist to this genre with a rare round watch known as the RM 63-01 Dizzy Hands.
Mille says his new creation draws its inspiration from the first lines of a poem entitled Le Temps, written by Gérard de Nerval, a grand exponent of the French romantic tradition of his day:
Le Temps ne surprend pas le sage ; Mais du Temps le sage se rit,
Car lui seul en connaît l’usage…
Time does not surprise the wise, but of Time the wise laughs, as only he knows how to use it.
The Dizzy Hands keeps time normally, until the pusher in the center of the crown is depressed once. At that point, the sapphire glass dial begins to slowly rotate counterclockwise while the hour hand moves clockwise, both at different speeds. Neither moves quickly, so the dance is a slow one, yet the motion renders the time display, and indeed the position of the dial, quite incorrect. This frees the wearer from the bonds of time, hopefully enabling him to pass the next unmeasured period without a care. When the joyous interval comes to an end, the owner simply depresses the pusher again and the dial and hands assume the positions required to display the current time.
The mechanism powering the RM 63-01 is caliber CRMA3, and it is a completely new movement developed by Richard Mille’s engineers in Les Breuleux. They reinvent principles taken from chronograph design to achieve creative results by separating the hour and minute functions completely from one another.
The RM 63-01 Dizzy Hands will retail for SFr. 108,000 without VAT.
Unfortunately, photography was not permitted, so we present the official press images.
