Ulysse Nardin followed up its Royal Blue Tourbillon, which boasted a mainplate and bridges made of blue sapphire, with the new Royal Ruby Tourbillon, a 99-piece limited edition that features movement bridges and mainplates crafted in ruby and equipped with a flying tourbillon that appears to defy gravity. The skeletonized, manual-winding movement, Caliber UN-79, is constructed along the principles of famous Swiss watchmaker James Pellaton. The flange of the dial is set with 12 rubies representing the hours, along with 48 diamonds. The 41-mm 950 platinum case is set with 92 diamonds, including 60 on the bezel. Next to diamond, ruby is the strongest precious gemstone; the ruby mainplate lends the timepiece a splash of eye-catching red that contrasts with the white alligator strap, with its platinum folding buckle.
Not content with wowing the watch world with its ultra-complicated Histoire de Tourbillon 4 and Opus XIII, luxury jeweler and watchmaker Harry Winston also added a sophisticated tourbillon timepiece to its Ocean collection at this year’s Baselworld. The Harry Winston Ocean Tourbillon Jumping Hour combines an unusually designed flying tourbillon with a jumping-hours complication, the first in the Ocean collection.
The watch’s manual-wind movement, Caliber HW4401, features a tourbillon that is suspended from two hand-chamfered steel bridges, rather than in its typical location on the back of the movement plate, giving it the illusion of hanging free in space, its motion apparently unconnected to the rest of the mechanism. In reality, the tourbillon is driven by a wheel geared to its outer circumference and almost completely concealed by the dial’s minute track. An aperture at the 12 o’clock position reveals the hour numeral, which instantaneously jumps at the start of each hour. Harry Winston has designed the dial of the Ocean Tourbillon Jumping Hour so that the minute pointer, a tiny red arrow, never blocks the hour window. The 60-second rotation of the tourbillon serves as a small seconds indicator, and a power-reserve indicator is located on the caseback. The other notable feature of this watch? Its 110-hour power reserve, provided by series-connected twin barrels.
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