Messages: 10261 Location: London, UK
Registered: October 2003
New Opus 6 from Harry Winston
Fri, 31 March 2006 18:14
Hi All;
One of the highlights of many previous Basel shows has been the Harry Winston Opus series; these are collaborations between the famed jewellery house & prominent individualist watchmakers. Previous collaborations have included such luminaries as F-P Journe, A. Prezusio, Vianney Halter, C. Claret, and last year with F. Baumgartner. This year the firm are working with the Franco/British team of Greubel Forsey and the results of this collaboration are truly astounding.
The Opus 6 is a massive white gold case which seems to contain nothing but a tourbillon; but on closer examination one can see that it is no ordinary tourbillon, in fact not only is it a double tourbillon with a one minute cage rotating inside a four minute one, but the whole cage is also inclined at 30° from the horizontal. The twin attributes of a double tourbillon and the 30° incline combine to produce a mechanism that is essentially immune to any positional errors.
But this is not the whole story; remember that this is a collaboration, with the watchmaking skills of the above mentioned do allied to the aesthetic skills of one of the world’s great jewellers. This results in a timepiece which is also visually stunning as well as technically excellent. The tourbillon seems to rotate with no connection to the rest of the mechanism and a casual viewer might wonder where the rest of the mechanism has gone, and also where the hands might have gone. In fact there are no hands, time is told by reading the 3 small discs at the top of the watch, they display the seconds, minutes and hours (reading left to right) and the winding gear & the rest of the movement hide under the plates which support these discs. This leaves the tourbillon to rotate unencumbered serenely above a blued gold base plate. The blued steel conical pillars support a polished steel tourbillon bridge which is crafted in the shape of the Harry Winston signature double arches.
One of the themes of the Opus series has been to allow the watchmakers complete artistic freedom and this has resulted in some creative ways of displaying the time, the system used by Greubel Forsey in the Opus 6 is innovative but still readable. There are two drum shaped circles applied to the ‘terrace’ at the top of the watch, the smaller one on the left is solid and the larger one hollow; there is an ogival shaped cutout on the smaller one and two of them on the larger and through these cutouts one can read the seconds, minutes and hours. The actual time is indicated by reading the numbers opposite the red applied pointers and these pointers are just some of the playful touches evident throughout the watch. It seems strange to talk about a watch of this complexity and cost as playful but the makers have chosen to break free of the normal constraints of watch designing & have allowed their imaginations to run free. The more you examine the watch, the more there is to see; look at the finish on the two drums for example; one is matt and the other highly polished, then look at the bridge that runs between them and see how that has a frosted finish. Note how the hour and minute windows occupy the rightmost part of the watch, so that if only a small part of it protrudes from under the shirt cuff, you will be able to read the time. Look at how the number 6 on the hour dial is in red, and also look how there is a band of polished gold running through face of the watch which also forms the number 6; this is to signify that this is the 6th Opus watch, that we are in the 6th year of the third millennium and that the total number to be produced will also be just six, making this the most exclusive model of the Opus series yet to be produced.
First deliveries are expected in June with the rest following at 6 to 7 week intervals
Good Luck
James
"'Tis with our judgements as our watches: none go just alike, yet each believes his own."
- James Dowling (MrRolex)