Dave B
217
Christiaan Van Der Klaauw Eclips
I wanted to provide some pictures of the Christiaan Van Der Klaauw Eclips I own. I have been reading your articles and I finally figured out how to convert my files to a smaller size for uploading. I hope this works.
When I first saw this watch, I was struck by its use of color and detail. It was one of the times when a picture never really captured the depth of a watch attributes.
The Eclips comes with a brief description that takes a little cruising around the web to fully understand the detail. I found the description of the function of the Astrolabe provided on the Christiaan Van Der Klaauw web site helped me understand the Eclips instructions. The Eclips dial has the hour, minute, and second hands, positions of the sun and moon relative to each other, date, month, and eclipse subdial. The new moon is indicated by the sun and moon superimposed. A full moon is where the sun and moon are opposite each other. The eclipse in the Astrolabe is when the dragon hand is also in line with a new moon or full moon. In the Eclips, this is indicated by the subdial pointing in the 12/6 position and the occurrence of the new moon (lunar eclipse) or full moon (solar eclipse). If you take the center of the eclipse subdial as the earth, you will see that the Eclips has a small yellow dot between the eclipse subdial and the center of the watch dial. This represents the sun. The tip of the eclipse subdial represents the moon. When the moon is between the earth and sun, we have an eclipse window. The red tip on the subdial indicates the ascending node similar to the Astrolabe dragon head. The eclipse subdial rotates 360 degrees in 346.6 days. This means that we have an eclipse window every 173.3 days (a half turn of the subdial hand). I?ve used the term eclipse window. The eclipse subdial has a range indicating when an eclipse will occur. This eclipse window lasts 30 to 36 days. As a minimum we need to have a full moon and new moon for the solar and lunar eclipse to happen.
The color on the sun/moon dial is striking. The gold sun is fixed on the subdial to be centered with the 12 position at noon. On the daylight side, the blue color starts very light (almost white) around the sun and radiating darker as it travels to night. The night portion has a deep blue background with the stars small at twilight and getting larger as the night progresses. If you look at the base of the sun/moon subdial, you will see a silhouette of a windmill and a church steeple. This gives the appearance of looking over a village. Great additional piece of detail.
The quarter moon travels on a separate wheel counter-clockwise with a standard 29.5 day moon phase. I can?t tell if this uses a 59 tooth wheel or a smooth analog motion. The sun dial travels clockwise. Having the quarter moon travel above the sun dial creates a depth to this dial that for me is strikingly beautiful.
The guilloche work on the dial radiates from the center of the sun/moon subdial and fans out to the base of the dial. If you look carefully, you can see that the guilloche travels slightly beyond the rhodinated circle for the seconds. I believe the dial and case work are done by the same supplier for Martin Braun. Finally we have the dark blue hour and minute Breguet hands and the red second hand. This watch is very easy to read. This is a great attribute since I like to glance at the time rather than stare at my watch during a conversation.
Finding the GO movement in this watch was an unexpected treat. This watch is driven by a GO Cal 39. This is a great base movement and required no additional finishing. The new Eclips use the ETA 2824-2 with exceptional Benzinger finish work. I have a GO Senator Perpetual and the Eclipse case is slightly larger. The Eclipe is 12.6mm high. When I close doors and drawers, I have a tendancy to catch the top of the watch. The first week I scuffed the gold near the top of the watch. I?ve since learned to compensate for the watch height. The case also uses a lot of gold, so this is a heaver than average watch. Anyone who asks to see the watch is struck by the weight. I should note that I find the weight comfortable. The only detail I found to be odd was the date subdial. There is no divider between day 31 and 1. Looks like 311 at the top of this dial.
For me, this is an exceptional watch. I?ve not found any source to get a lot of information about his work. I was surprised, then in awe, of his table clocks that were displayed by The Purists. If possible, I would like to see other Christiaan Van Der Klaauw watch owners provide descriptions of their watches with photos. His literature only provides current watch selections, so I?m curious to see the variety of watches he has produced in the past.
Dave B