Blancpain Premiers its World-Exclusive Traditional Chinese Calendar Wristwatch
Posted in articles&news on Mar 28th, 2012 No Comments »
Blancpain premiered its world-exclusive Traditional Chinese Calendar wristwatch at Baselworld 2012, marking an astonishing feat in the haute horlogerie industry. Blancpains’ Traditional Chinese Calendar mechanical wristwatch honors an age-old cultural calendar still in use by many Chinese lunisolar traditionalists to date.
The scientific technology Blancpain implemented to manufacture this watch involved fundamentals well over a thousand years old and richly ingrained in Chinese cultural tradition. The Traditional Chinese Calendar watch uses a lunisolar calendar, which is a solar calendar with the lunar cycle (29.53059 days) as its base unit, with 12 lunar months totaling 354 days shy of 11 days for a year, which was resolved by adding a leap month for a 13 month year. This is in contrast to that of the Gregorian solar calendar which uses a solar day base unit, having long days in summer and short days in winter, which averages about 365.2425 days a year.
Aesthetics of this dynamic timepiece includes its appealing dial which displays minutes, hours and the Gregorian calendar synergized with the Chinese calendar indicators: dual-hour indicator, day, month with indication of leap months, 12 animal zodiac signs and the five elements as well as the 10 celestial stems. The 12 zodiac animals combined with the five elements and the 10 celestial stems that represent the terrestrial branches follows the 60-year cycle essential to Chinese culture. Another key element of this timepiece is the moon phases, given its correlation to the lunar cycle and traditional Chinese months.
It has a counter at 12 o’clock indicating dual-hour numerals and symbols for a full 24 hour cycle; displayed at 3 o’clock are the elements and the celestial stems representative of a 10-year cycle; the month of the Chinese calendar (12-month cycle), its 30-day cycle – date and the leap month indicator is at 9 o’clock, with moon phases window at 6 o’clock.
The Traditional Chinese Calendar timepiece is powered by a new self-winding Calibre 3638 movement with a 7-day power reserve, consisting of 434 parts and 39 jewels. It has a 45 mm diameter platinum case and sapphire case-back with a beautifully engraved dragon to celebrate year 2012. The crown is a Madagascar ruby cabochon with five integrated under lug correctors for indicator adjustments and it showcases signature features of the Villeret collection.
The white gold version of the watch is available in a 20-piece limited edition; however, an unlimited rose gold version is also available.
Blancpains’ painstaking efforts of its symbolic Traditional Chinese Calendar timepiece certainly warrants acknowledgement for such an outstanding horological achievement. Blancpain has set an impressive milestone leaving other watch manufacturers running towards an enviable far reaching task.
