Those who innovate

Those who innovate

Romain Gauthier: The Insight Micro-Rotor Squelette

WHEN INNOVATION IS DECORATION

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By Pierre Maillard

October 2020

Exactly 350 hours of anglage and polishing per watch. Or, as one of the anglage specialists at Romain Gauthier puts it, “a genuine test of mental strength. Eight hours a day for a month and a half, you have to focus on a minute area. It’s like a marathon. You have to advance angle after angle, go back over your work again and again...”

Romain Gauthier: The Insight Micro-Rotor Squelette

WHEN INNOVATION IS DECORATION

Español Français

By Pierre Maillard

October 2020

Romain Gauthier: The Insight Micro-Rotor Squelette

Exactly 350 hours of anglage and polishing per watch. Or, as one of the anglage specialists at Romain Gauthier puts it, “a genuine test of mental strength. Eight hours a day for a month and a half, you have to focus on a minute area. It’s like a marathon. You have to advance angle after angle, go back over your work again and again...”

E

xactly 350 hours of anglage and polishing per watch. Or, as one of the anglage specialists at Romain Gauthier puts it, “a genuine test of mental strength. Eight hours a day for a month and a half, you have to focus on a minute area. It’s like a marathon. You have to advance angle after angle, go back over your work again and again...”

And there are 156 interior angles, the most difficult to work, in an Insight Micro-Rotor Squelette!


The Insight Micro-Rotor comes in different versions: the Manufacture-Only Carbonium® Edition with a 42mm Carbonium® case; or the Special Order versions, with a 39.5mm case and a choice of 18K red gold, 18K white gold, 950 platinum, or grade 5 natural or black DLC titanium.

The task is all the more difficult in that the baseplate and the movement’s eight bridges are made from grade 5 titanium, which is extremely difficult to finish by hand – far more so than the traditional brass.

The skeletonised movement is the Micro-Rotor, the prestigious automatic movement from Romain Gauthier with a micro-rotor carved out of 22-carat gold, which winds a double mainspring barrel providing a power reserve of 80 hours.

Romain Gauthier: The Insight Micro-Rotor Squelette

But the truly striking thing about this timepiece is the modernity that this huge effort of decoration on titanium – extremely rare – imparts to the highly traditional technique of skeletonisation, transfiguring it and turning it into something entirely new. The transparency, depth and architecture of the movement are shown to best advantage in this absolutely splendid, resolutely contemporary watch.

EXPLORE ALL OUR EDITIONS SINCE THE 1930s ONLINE

Romain Gauthier: The Insight Micro-Rotor Squelette

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