Cartier is one of those very few luxury Swiss watch brands that, for an extended period of time, has maintained both an extremely strong array of main collection offerings and a genuinely sophisticated, unique, and diverse line of haute horlogerie ultra high-end pieces. That arguably puts a lot of pressure on the company and Cartier’s head of movement creation department Carole Forestier-Kasapi, as each year, they must up the ante and surprise the world with complicated “high mechanics” and stunning “high jewelry” watches. Let’s see six new high-complication watches that Cartier freshly developed or modified and will officially debut at SIHH 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland, in January.
Six Cartier High-Complication Watches For SIHH 2016 Watch Releases
The Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Earth and Moon watch was originally released at SIHH 2014 with a stunning lapis lazuli blue stone dial. The Earth and Moon is a prime example of Cartier’s approach to high watchmaking: when it comes to its most technically complex and function-packed pieces, for Cartier, there usually has to be a blend of traditional complications and design elements, creative new twists on some other traditional features, and last but not least, some genuinely useful indications.
Six Cartier replica watches High-Complication Watches For SIHH 2016 Watch Releases
Six Cartier High-Complication Watches For SIHH 2016 Watch Releases
First, the in-house developed and manufactured Calibre 9440 MC movement packs a tourbillon – ticking the box of traditional complications. The movement is a massive 40mm wide, but only 5.65mm thick, and comprises 362 individual parts. Second – and here comes the twist on a historical feature – the watch displays the phase of the Moon on a meteorite stone disc that, with the pusher at four o’clock, can be moved right over the six o’clock position to cover up the tourbillon underneath it. By another press of the button, the disc will move in a way that its position corresponds with the phase of the Moon.
replica watches UK Six Cartier High-Complication Watches For SIHH 2016 Watch Releases
The Earth, meanwhile, is represented by the sub-dial in the upper center of the face of the watch. Also crafted from meteorite, it displays the hours and minutes with two blued steel hands pointing to the large, skeletonized Roman numerals on the periphery of the dial. Around the sub-dial is a 24-hour indication disc that can be adjusted individually with the pusher at 2 – bringing a genuinely useful indication into the picture. All three boxes are ticked: tourbillon, proprietary Moon phase display, 24-hour indication… All set inside a large, 47mm-wide and 16.65mm-thick pink gold case, limited to just 15 numbered pieces. Price for the Cartier Rotonde de Cartier Earth and Moon watch in pink gold is $235,000.
Six Cartier High-Complication Watches For SIHH 2016 Watch Releases
The Cartier Clé de Cartier originally premiered at SIHH 2015 (see our hands-on with the main collection pieces here), and since then, the collection has already seen the addition of a mysterious hour complication at Watches & Wonders in Hong Kong (hands-on here). While thus far, this latter iteration is probably my favorite Cartier watch design ever, the Cartier Clé de Cartier Automatic Skeleton also appears to be a stunner. With its 41mm-wide and 11.45mm-thick palladium case, the key design elements of the Clé – including the “key-like” rectangular crown – are very much present, while the dial and in fact the movement itself have been skeletonized in typical Cartier fashion.
Six Cartier High-Complication Watches For SIHH 2016 Watch Releases
Six Cartier High-Complication Watches For SIHH 2016 Watch Releases
Here, the interesting bit – and in fact a quite impressive engineering achievement – is that the Cartier 9621 MC actually is the maison‘s first skeleton movement with automatic winding – which we are sure will be a lot of fun to see in the metal. Cartier say its engineers put a lot of effort into making their latest achievement, the addition of an automatic winding rotor, as invisible as possible. As such, the rotor has been skeletonized in a way that it only has two central spokes and an extremely thin periphery, with the rest of it, well, pretty much gone. This was done so as to expose as much of the movement as possible, and not cover it up with a large, solid 22k gold rotor.