The international hall of high class watchmaking that is known as the SIHH (Haute Horlogerie International Hall) in Geneva is without a doubt the most important event in the world for its field. For this reason, the most traditional watchmaking companies come to this meeting place with their best products, in the attempt to captivate a select and competitive market. Cartier, one of the most famous names in this industry, introduced two exquisite models of its classic Rotonde Mysterious series: the Rotonde Mysterious Day & Night and the Rotonde Skeleton Mysterious Double Tourbillon, during the SIHH on January, 2018.
The emblematic mechanical model of the French watchmaker: the Rotonde Mysterious was originally introduced at the beginning of the last century, and had the peculiarity of its hands being included in rotating discs that hid the mechanisms and gave it the sensation of floating away.
Cartier´s brand new Rotonde Mysterious Day & Night offers a pink gold or white body and the characteristic rotating commands of the brand decorated with a blue sapphire. The face of the watch is divided into two halves, upper and lower halves, which give rise to its two main complications: the day / night indicator and the retrograde minute hand.
In the top half, a golden sun on a white background indicates the time during the day, while at night it produces a moon on a black background. The hour demarcations are distributed on a scale of 12 Roman numerals from VI to VI (12 hours from 6am to 6pm), occupying only the top halves. Both the Sun pertaining to the day as well as the moon pertaining to the night are indicators and appear to be floating.
In the lower half of the face the semicircular minute hand can be found, which indicates its position on a scale of 60 minutes spanning from the right to the left (in a clockwise sequence), but at the end, the hand returns to the home position in one jump, thanks to its retrograde functionality.
This beautiful watch has a manual-winding mechanism that uses 174 mechanical parts and caters for an oscillation of 4Hz with a power reserve of up to 48 hours.
The Rotonde Skeleton Mysterious shall be reissued, but in its Double Tourbillon version, which is a celebration of the tremendous difficulty that the mechanisms represent and amount of the notable complications of the Double Tourbillon, which is emblematic of the mechanical accuracy in haute horlogerie. Tourbillon is French for “whirlwind.” This is because the mechanism literally spins on itself.
The Mysterious Day & Night model shall be offered to the public at a price of US$63,000, while the Skeleton Mysterious Double Tourbillon shall range in price between US$216,000 for its initial model, and US$324,000 for the version with diamond bezel, and US$ 530,000 for the diamond body version, with numbered items and limited to 30 units per version. ■
