The quaint village of Villeret, the birthplace of Blancpain, bestows its name upon the brand’s most classic collection. Deeply rooted in the manufacture’s rich heritage, these watches reflect the brand’s technical prowess and encapsulate its design principles. Their clean lines, lucid dials, and slender double-stepped cases convey the essence of Blancpain’s elegance, while their movements represent state of the art mechanical execution. The collection comprises of sophisticated complications, from ultra-thin timepieces to tourbillons and chronographs; and it goes without saying it also offers a perpetual calendar.
Appropriately enough for a leap year, Blancpain introduces a new variant of the Villeret Perpetual Calendar, for the first time with a green dial. Adorned with a sun ray-brush, this dark green hue is inspired by the forests around Le Brassus, where the brand has been based since 1735. It makes for a magnificent backdrop for the applied Roman numerals and the slim hands.
As fans of this complex calendar form know, the perpetual calendar has a mechanical memory that displays the correct date even in leap years. It will not need adjusting until February 2100, when there will be no February 29th – as is the case in all years divisible by 100 but not by 400. This exception occurs in the Gregorian calendar in three out of every four centuries.
At Blancpain, this refined calendar mechanism is complemented by a moon phase with a face. “The man in the moon” is beautiful symbol of how Blancpain breathed new life into the moon-phase indication after the quartz crisis in the 1980s. Inside the rose gold case, with a diameter of 42mm and a height of just 10.8mm, beats the movement 5954 with a power reserve of 72 hours. This self-winding caliber consists of 351 components.
Through the sapphire crystal case back, one can admire not only the fine craftsmanship but also the oscillating weight decorated with the signature honeycomb pattern in rose gold, as well as the silicon balance spring. In addition to its inherently complex nature, this perpetual calendar has two special features that make it particularly user-friendly. The first is the protection of the movement and its calendar mechanism from damage if the watch is adjusted during the change of display. The second is the placement of the correctors under the lugs. Thanks to this patented system, introduced by Blancpain in 2005 as a world premiere for a perpetual calendar, the calendar displays can be adjusted manually without the need for a correction tool. Thanks to their positioning under the horns of the case, the correctors are invisible when the watch is worn, adding to the clean appearance of this haute-horlogerie statement piece.
Pricing for the Blancpain Villeret Perpetual Calendar is marked at $50,600.
To learn more, visit Blancpain, here.