Complexity

Description

ARTYA COMPLEXITY

Limited edition, 9 numbered pieces

The tourbillon, perfected.

Inclined double Cônillon, 12h/6h, with differential · Sapphire case · ArtyA Geneva

A MECHANICAL SCULPTURE IN PERPETUAL MOTION.

For the first time in the history of watchmaking, two inclined tourbillons, the Cônillons, beat face to face within a single movement, at twelve and six o'clock, in an architecture where no axis, neither that of the balance, nor of the carriage, nor of the pallet fork, runs parallel to the Cônillon facing it. Where a conventional tourbillon compensates for gravity in one position only, the Cônillon, whose balance traces a conical path, multiplies that number. To unite two is to cover every orientation the watch takes on the wrist.

At the heart of the architecture, a differential splits the barrel's energy in strictly equal shares between the two regulators and produces the kinematic average of their rates. Their separation at twelve and six o'clock, never exploited until now, makes that average a measure taken between two opposing points of the dial rather than two neighbouring ones. The result: chronometry smoothed across 360 degrees every thirty seconds, served by a spectacle without equal, two inclined carriages in perpetual rotation, visible at the same time, alive beneath the dial.

The lineage is learned. The inclined double tourbillon extends the expertise of Eric Coudray, father of the gyrotourbillon, while the Cônillon draws its origin from the research of Andrew Holden Potter around 1860. The Complexity calibre brings together 287 components and 44 jewels, developed by ArtyA and brought to life with Purtec. Its principle rests on an inclined axis that traces a conical path, carrying the tourbillon carriage through a succession of varied positions and exposing the balance to every orientation against gravity, correcting its influence more completely than a conventional tourbillon.

THE CASE, A LESSON IN SAPPHIRE.

A pioneer of sapphire machining for more than eleven years, ArtyA has shaped for the Complexity a case carved entirely from crystal, a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale, after 90 hours of diamond machining and 80 hours of polishing. Its triple-concave caseband and two optical domes, polished to the tolerances of a lens, turn the sapphire into a natural magnifier and lend the carriages a depth that nothing distracts from.

ArtyA has registered a unique sapphire-sourcing process named ArtyA Saphir Absolu™, which demands absolute purity, free of inclusions, in the image of the finest diamonds.

THE HAND TAKEN TO THE EXTREME.

Every decoration here is executed by hand. All the bevels are hand-polished, the flanks drawn out with the cabron. The high surfaces are hand bead-blasted, the low surfaces worked in relief, down to the hand hammering of the lower planes on the barrel and differential bridges. The plate's countersinks receive hand perlage to reveal the complexity of the differential, which the averaging bridge exposes further through a polished molding. A numbered plaque, hand-engraved and hand-bevelled in straight grain, signs the piece.

The dial is entirely hand-engraved, in a clawed texture, on a finely sandblasted ground, for a texture and a depth that break the light along every edge. The hour markers are sandblasted and hand-polished, their blasted face fading away so as to take nothing from the play of the engraving.

From movement to dial, the whole is black-rhodium plated, for absolute chromatic coherence.

Supplied by the brand to the GPHG for its entry.