Horological Meandering

SJX
[Purist]
8540

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A quick look at the Zenith Christoph Colomb Tourbillon

The Zenith Christophe Colomb Tourbillon has the escapement mounted on two gimbals, as on a marine chronometer, to keep the escapement horizontal at all times.The tourbillon cage and gimbals total 166 parts against about 50 for a regular, gravity-affected tourbillon.

The watch was on the wrist of Jean-Frederic Dufour, Zenith's President and CEO. He is a very different personality from his predecessor (click here  to see an interview I did with Thierry Nataf), but the right leader for the times as Nataf was for the pre-recession era. Notably, Nataf was proclaimed to me he was Zenith's Chief Designer, in addition to being President and CEO; Mr Dufour seems to have modestly declined that third title.

Above: Jean-Frederic Dufour with Cyndy Lim, General Manager of LVMH Watch and Jewellery for Malaysia and Singapore and one of the rare female senior executives in the watch industry in SE Asia

In theory this eliminates the effects of gravity on the escapement. In practice it just makes for a cool looking mechanism, in my humble opinion. The look of the watch is almost antithetical to its complication. After being inured to extreme complications from the likes of BNB, the simple mind like mine automatically assumes a non-traditional complication will be in a non-traditional case as it was originally intended to be.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

This movement was developed under Nataf's reign and originally unveiled as the provocative Extreme Defy Zero-G but I believe those were never produced. This much more restrained Christoph Colomb is a limited edition of 25 pieces.

For those wondering, the bubble on the back is not apparent if you wear the watch fairly loosely.

Here are a couple more quick and dirty (I didn't wipe the watch) images and a video clip.

- SJX

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