The versatile 45.5mm Virtuoso VII Retrograde Perpetual Calendar by Bovet 1822 can transform from a regular wrist watch to a pocket watch and also to a table clock. It presents two distinct faces on its emblematic case. The first face displays the hours, minutes, seconds and power reserve, as well as all the indications relative to the perpetual calendar.
The second face of the VIRTUOSO VII transports us to an entirely different universe. The hours and minutes dial, off-centered at 12 o’clock, gives prominence once again to the movement, decorated here with circular Côtes de Genève centered on the seconds chassis. The seconds chassis is a patented mechanism developed by BOVET, which allows the seconds to be displayed on the same axis and on both sides of the movement, all the while inversing their direction of rotation. This side of the movement also features a seconds hand elegantly positioned at 6 o’clock. Functions are: hours, minutes, sub-seconds, day, retrograde date, month, leap year, reversed hand-fitting (hours, minutes and seconds).
CALIBER: 13BM12AIQPR, TYPE: hand-wound DIAMETER: 13 3/4 ''' FREQUENCY: 21600 vph. A power reserve indicator displays the energy amassed by the barrel spring, which alone provides five days of autonomy.
THE PERPETUAL CALENDAR COMPLICATION is highly sought after by collectors by virtue of the ever-useful information it provides: day, date, month and leap year cycle, with an accuracy that requires no adjustments for 400 years. But specialists also appreciate the dexterity inherent to the production of this complication. For watchmakers hand-adjust the functions resulting from the interactions between each of the movement’s 489 parts. There is poetry in the perpetual calendar’s mechanisms too, where the infinitely small is juxtaposed with the infinite immensity of space that drives time. This drive is regulated in minute detail by the BOVET watchmakers to obtain exemplary chronometry in this movement, whose fastest wheel turns twelve times a minute and whose slowest wheel needs a full eight years to complete a single revolution.
The Virtuoso VII Retrograde Perpetual Calendar is available in 18-karat 5N rose gold ($79,000) or in 18-karat white gold ($82,800) with either a black or white lacquered dial. Each model is also available with diamonds ($88,600 in rose gold, $92,000 in white gold.
Virtuoso VII Retrograde Perpetual Calendar by Bovet 1822 as a Table Clock
Virtuoso VII Retrograde Perpetual Calendar by Bovet 1822 as a Watch
Virtuoso VII Retrograde Perpetual Calendar by Bovet 1822 as a Pocket Watch
Virtuoso VII Retrograde Perpetual Calendar by Bovet 1822
