A groundbreaking conical tourbillon, high jewelry know-how and animated precious stones come together for this jewel box of a watch from the house of HYT. The house’s Conical Tourbillon Infinity Sapphires is a spectrum of exceptional savoir-faire. This new timepiece expresses the signal vision of watchmaking that this independent Swiss brand has been pursuing since its inception 10 years ago. This limited edition timepiece surprises by its conical shape offering a clear vision to the dramatically beautiful insides of the watch.  This gilded « cage » houses the dynamic sapphire animations and a 701 TC caliber, a hand-wound mechanical movement oscillating at a frequency of 21,600 vph (3Hz). 

The tourbillon comes to life at the heart of this watch and its spiral balance is inclined at an intriguing 30 degrees to the horizontal. This audacious engineering prowess that builds on the work of German watchmaker Walter Prendel and his inclined balance tourbillon initially positioned at 6 o’clock. In his workshops in Groitzsch, in a region of Saxony as famous as Switzerland for the development of advanced horology, Walter Prendel wanted to demonstrate the relevance of his research – based on the theories of master watchmaker Alfred Helwig – on improving the stability and regularity of an oblique tourbillon with a balance-spring assembly inclined at 30° from the horizontal. It makes a complete clockwise rotation in 30 seconds. 

Nestled around its periphery, three exceptional faceted sapphires, each 2.5 mm in diameter, magnify the life force emanating from this breathtaking visual watch – a perception itself amplified by the almost imperceptible, airy sound of the tourbillon. These distinctly colored gems – fuchsia, blue-gray and yellow – rotate at different speeds. The first, the fuchsia gem, completes 4 revolutions per minute (rpm). The second, the blue-gray one, rotates at 5 rpm, and the last, yellow, at 6 rpm. Each of these dazzling spheres is tracked by a counterweight, of a distinctive color and finely finished in miniature paint. The tourbillon’s visual impact is enhanced by six smaller sapphires, each 1.5 mm in diameter, set in the tourbillon’s brackets. The timepiece is being brought out in a limited edition of 8 and the purchasers of the seven remaining watches can choose their sapphires from a selection proposed by the house. Special to The Gourmet Gazette.  https://www.hytwatches.com/