Independents

Vincent Calabrese, one of the founders of the AHCI 25 years ago, looks back on a long and important career as an independent in the watch industry.  His designs signaled the beginning of the tourbillon craze that we are still witnesses to.  The Blancpain 8 day tourbillon is a Calabrese design.  Another emblematic design from Vincent Calabrese is the Corum Golden Bridge.

Vincent Calabrese has a luminous shop in Lausanne, a 2 minute walk from the main train station.  Fully equipped with the necessary machine park he still works without any help of CNC.

Vincent Calabrese has always been interested in finding solutions for the impossible;  the flattest tourbillon, the reduction to the minimum, innovative solutions.  Earlier in his career these were the Blancpain tourbillon and his Spatiale series of watches.  His first break with his own tradition came after the minimal tourbillon regulator of the Spatiale.  He then decided to shift his work to adding complications to an existing movement, the ETA 2892.  Useful complications adding the absolute minimum in height to the movement, 0.8mm in general.  The second break in his oeuvre was with the initiation of the Nouvelle Horlogerie Calabrese a new brand started 3 years ago sporting his complications.

And now for some pictures, a look at some early work:

Personelles, Calabrese

The Spatiale Tourbillon Regulator front and back

 Now we shift to the complications starting with a simple power reserve indication, 0.8mm additional thickness.  Note the typical whitened silver dial.  These dials are each unique, the pattern engraved by hand.

The "Mobile", below, is a 2 time zone watch.  The home time is shown with the disk at all times.  The actual time on the hands, easily changeable using the crown.

The "Transvolt" is again a double time zone watch, but more complete as it allows any time difference and not just hour jumps for the special time zones in India etc.

The "2+" adds to the double time zone the weekday indication and a big date.

The "52", below, has day, date and week of the year indications along with the power reserve.  The name is of course derived from the 52 weeks of the year, but also from the fact it was announced for Vincent's 52nd birthday.

The "Night and Day" is a novel 24 hour indication.  From 6:00 to 18:00 (6AM to 6PM) on a white background and 18:00 to 6:00 (6PM to 6AM) on a black background that change at midnight and noon.  This gives an immediate indication of the 24 hours without giving up the habitual 12 hour watch face.

The "Baladin" shows the hours in a turning window on the dial that also points to the minutes on the rim of the face.  To avoid the problems of inversed reading of 6 and 9 letters are also used.  Here T for three.

The "Vincent"  (hint, think French, 2000)

The "Horus", note the similarity to the BLU Atoll from Lederer which was introduced almost the same day.

The "Calasutra" the story of two lovers

The "Goldpfeil", with jumping hours and date

The "Sun-tral", central jumping hours and minutes disk

Wow, what a collection. 

Mindboggling, adding complication after complication, each year something new.

And it doesn't stop here.

The NHS collection is still to go.