bernard cheong
7182
For the love of money....extract from "superwatches"
Breguet Chain & Fusee Tradition Tourbillon
For anyone who has always said watches, wine, art and antiques make bad investments; they invariably have a love for money and not for what it can deliver.
This watch, the Breguet Tradition Tourbillon with a chain and fusee demonstrates to those intimate with craft and performance on stage, that similar emotional fulfillment can be condensed into a wristwatch!
Yes, it is possible to be passionately obsessed with a machine. No, I have not lost my mind.
This is not going to be a trend. This watch is predictably a classic that was sprung onto the world by surprise! It is the discovery of a lost piece of work by Mozart, a large canvass by Da Vinci, a pristine Facel Vega, unused.
The price makes the watch an instant candidate for acquisition, making the year 2007 as a year of my buying three tourbillons!
The balance between the constructs of having a chain visibly strung across the watch's frontal face, and a tourbillon the largest diameter I have ever seen, made of titanium, in a century old design was genius.
To deny the fact that this is the most significant watch of 2007 is to reveal a lack of journalistic integrity. No less.
Poor taste and judgment will be the only defense.
There will be too much technical mumbo jumbo for a description of a chain and fusee. It is not a necessary device, but nonetheless, a most beautiful ancient way of both storing and delivering power.
Previous attempts at the chain always failed in not being able to show off the chain, and most could not even show the fusee! Lange's most recent attempt, the Tourbograph with the chain being next to invisible, was like buying a beautiful frame, but leaving the canvass behind!
The Cabestan by Vianney Halter was much better. However, even though I was among the first to place an order for the Cabestan, Vianney's subsequent withdrawal from the project was of grave concern to me. Vianney's work is almost all art, and the aesthetics of the Cabestan lost its pedigree without Vianney's vision.
The Breguet is a third of the price of the Cabestan! It is a full pedigree Breguet. The three dimensional layout of the tourbillon, the fusee with the overlaid chain, the barrel with two mainsprings and the dial form a box of 5 perfect circles.
Most of all, Hayek's dogged determination to acquire Marie Antionette's watch has infused the Tradition Breguet's with a poetic legacy. This is a landmark piece.
