The oldest watch manufacturer in the world has created a new pocket watch that has been eight years in the making and boasts a staggering amount of complications.
Vacheron Constantin have spent the last eight years creating and fine tuning their newest pocket watch, the ‘Reference 57260’, with this new mechanical watch featuring no less than fifty-seven complications!
This exquisite double-dial pocket watch was developed by a team of master watchmakers who used traditional principles of watchmaking, modern innovations and their own imagination to create a truly remarkable work of art.
To celebrate this exceptional craftsmanship, Vacheron Constantin have commissioned a coffee table book that shows the meticulous design process behind the new pocket watch through beautiful imagery.
An excerpt can be found below:
“Reference 57260 is a masterpiece of unimaginable complication and technical innovation, one that looks at least as far into the future as it looks back into the past for inspiration. It is a celebration of human ingenuity, technical mastery, and, yes, life itself, with its beating mechanical heart.
Conceived, developed, manufactured, prototyped, finished, and assembled over a breath-taking period of eight years by a team of three of Vacheron Constantin’s master watchmakers, this all-encompassing study of the past, present, and future of horology is stamped with the prestigious Hallmark of Geneva.
The symbolic name of Reference 57260 comprises two numbers: 57 for the number of complications and functions it features, and 260 for VacheronConstantin’s anniversary year in 2015. “
We mentioned earlier that the team used their own imagination in the crafting of this timepiece and even created some new complications, this resulted in a total of ten patents being filed! There are multiple calendars found within including a never seen before Hebrew calendar, which was a first for this mechanical pocket watch. It also boasts a double retrograde split-seconds chronograph as well as reinterpreted, and redesigned existing complications like the armillary tri-axial tourbillon.
With a watch so intricately and painstakingly designed you can expect a watch that is not like any other, and what makes this watch stand out from the rest is the small details. The tourbillon cage for example, is shaped like Vacheron Constantin’s Maltese cross emblem and the “simple” indication of hours, minutes, and seconds, is interestingly displayed regulator style on the ‘Reference 57260’.
It’s not only the craftsmanship that needs to be considered when designing a timepiece as intricate as this but an understanding of mathematics to an exceptional level is also needed when bridging the cap of horology and new design.
Vacheron Constantin’s watch history is enriched with extraordinary, complicated and beautifully elegant timepieces and this new addition is sure to stand the test of time for the world’s oldest continuously operating watch manufacturer.
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