The house of Bovet is unveiling a newly formed trilogy of celestial timepieces, a poetic narrative that begun two years ago with the launch of the Récital 18 Shooting Star tourbillon. Its redesigned asymmetrical case and intuitive display of astronomical indications inspired the creation of the Récital 20 Astérium in 2017. This year Bovet introduces the final chapter in the celestial-inspired range: the Récital 22 Grand Récital tourbillon.
This grand astronomical timepiece invites us to observe three heavenly bodies right from the wrist. The sun is represented by the flying tourbillon, with its carriage bridge raised above the surface of the movement and hand-shaped in the form of sunrays. The tourbillon revolves once every 60 seconds, indicating the seconds by a hand attached to the carriage wheel that floats over a scaled twenty-second sector.
The hemispherical earth rotates on its own axis showing the hours on a 24-hour cycle. Its surface is hand-embellished with a miniature painted map. The artisan painter used luminescent paint to execute the details of the map, so it becomes illuminated in low light conditions. After the painting of the map was done, the artisan applied several successive layers of transparent lacquer to the globe’s surface before it was polished. To enhance the sense of realism, clouds and air currents have been painted onto the globe’s surface, but separated from the earth’s crust by thick layers of lacquer, so they appear to be floating in mid air. The earth makes one anti-clockwise rotation every 24 hours, indicating the passage of the hours on a graduated scale at the base of the globe.
The moon is represented by a sphere that orbits the earth in accordance of its natural synodic period - 29.53 days. The sphere is divided into two parts, black and textured, and filled with a luminescent surface. This way, the wearer can track the moon phases by seeing which part of the moon is directly illuminated by the sun.
The rest of the indications, the retrograde minute and power reserve, are displayed on hemispherical sectors curved to reflect the silhouette of the globe. A circular aperture is positioned on the left-hand side of the tourbillon carriage and topped by a magnifying glass, serves as a date indicator. The reverse side of the case, fitted with a sapphire crystal, reveals the hour, day, month, and leap-year indicators, as well as the double-sided date disk display.
The Récital 22 Grand Récital tourbillon, available in red gold (ref. R220001) or platinum (ref. R220002), is presented in a case measuring 46 mm in diameter, and inspired by the shape of a writing slope. The case accommodates a hand-wound mechanical movement, caliber 17DM03-TEL. This 472-component movement beats at a frequency of 18,000 vibrations/hour, while its single barrel provides a power reserve of over 9 days.
Bovet’s celestial timepiece is available in a limited edition of 60 unique exemplars. Each movement and the timepiece are assembled once the collector’s requests have been received. The customer can choose the orientation of the painted world map so that his chosen location could be positioned on the earth-sun axis when the timepiece displays midday.
The highly complicated Bovet Récital 22 Grand Récital holds no less than five patents and comes with a price tag of $469,800. More information at bovet.com.
