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Christophe Claret at the Geneva Watch Week 2014
Christophe Claret at the Geneva Watch Week 2014
Christophe Claret has been active producing high end watches for more than 25 years now. Up until 5 years ago his production was almost exclusively for 3rd parties, under then major names in the watch industry. He only rarely sold pieces under his own name 'though. That changed 5 years ago when he started his own brand Christophe Claret with the introduction of the Dual Tow watch. In now only 5 years he can claim that he has a collection of exclusive watches with 8 models in production.
Those watches fall into 3 collections:
1) Traditional Complication Watches
- Kantharos, Soprano, Adagio
2) Extreme Complication Watches
- DualTow, X-TREM-1
3) Interactive Gaming Complication watches
- Baccara, 21 Blackjack.
Today is the press conference for the introduction of the next watch in the Gaming watch collection the Poker Watch.
The "Salon Petit" at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues Geneva is standing room only for this event.
The watch itself automates a poker game for 3 players. Each player gets their own cards that as screened from the view of the other players by louvers. The challenge in this game is the fact it uses all 52 cards of the deck. To be able to incorporate this the Poker watch uses 4 disks, one of which is made of saphire so it is partially transparent in certain positions showing the card on the disk below. Two pushers activate the deals after rounds of betting. At each activation of a pusher a gong sounds in true Christophe Claret tradition.
The movement has no less than 655 parts and approx 72 hours of autonomy with its double barrels. The Poker is available in 4 versions, black PVD titanium and white gold, black PVD titanium and red gold, monochrome black PVD titanium with blue spinel hands and monochrome black PVD titanium with red ruby hands.
A final surprising dail, a breath forming condensation on the watch saphire reveals a pin-up girl. Welcome to Las Vegas! (I was not able to get a picture of that, but I did see it!)
The back of the watch is a roulette table as in the other Gaming watches.
The rest of the collection was, of course, also on display.
First the Interactive Gaming Complication watches:
The 21 Blackjack.
The Baccara
The Extreme Complication Watches
The X-TREM-1
The DualTow
And lastly the Traditional Complication Watches
The Kantharos
The Soprano
The Adagio
Some last pictures of the new Poker watch.
Finally Christophe Claret couldn't help but let loose a teaser for BaselWorld in about 2 months time. He will be adding a Complicated Ladies watch collection. I am looking forward to see what he has up his sleave.
Don
Christophe Claret at the Geneva Watch Week 2014
A talented brand
