LuxuryWatchesHow does a tourbillon movement work?All you need to know about the watch movement designed to defy gravityWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
LuxuryWatchesHow does a tourbillon movement work?All you need to know about the watch movement designed to defy gravityWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
All you need to know about the watch movement designed to defy gravity
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Roger Dubuis)
(Image credit: Roger Dubuis)
A chef once joked to me that the secret ingredient to a fillet mignon was an extra 20 quid. It would be easy, albeit a little churlish, to suggest the tourbillon movement could be subjected to a similar observation, but with a punchline of one or two extra zeros. Perhaps even an entire comma.
So why are tourbillons so expensive? The glib answer is because, well, that’s what people are willing to pay. But it’s also because of their extreme complexity and their prominent place in watchmaking history.
(Image credit: Vacheron Constantin)
(Image credit: Vacheron Constantin)
And so the tourbillon – French forwhirlwind, owing to the frantic movement of the spinning cage housing a ticking movement – was born. Given the complexity and genius, on show, watchmakers like to make their tourbillons visible on the dial. Often the entire cage is placed front-and-centre, as visible as the time itself.
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(Image credit: Bentley)
(Image credit: Bentley)
As ever with watchmaking, the beauty (and the value) is in the extraordinary complexity, the design and in taking the road less travelled for the sheer hell of it. Why do watchmakers still produce complex tourbillon movements and charge a fortune for them? Because they can.
Today, instead of acting as proof of a watch being more accurate than its lesser peers, a tourbillon cage prominently displayed on the dial is like a watch showing off its mechanical movement through an exhibition case back, only a few steps further up the food chain.
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