The competition for novelty and complication of watches among luxury watchmakers often brings lots of creative timepieces that redefines people’s perception on watches. A recent example is the Omega Skeletonized Central Tourbillon Watch.
Just look at its photo, you will be stricken by its pearlescent appearance. The watch is handcrafted by Omega’s horologist and takes about 540 hours to make such a watch. Its sleek De-Ville-style case is made of platinum, presented with a black alligator bracelet. But the highlight is the the central placement of the tourbillon.
The Omega Skeletonized Central Tourbillon is said to be the first watch with a central tourbillon. I am pretty surprised to know that it can be boasted as an innovation to move a tourbillon from noncentral place to the central. I wonder if there will be some other watches claiming that they are the first watch to place the tourbillon at the 1 o’clock or 2 o’clock. But later I found the reason why few watches have central tourbillon.
Take a careful look at the photo, you’ll find that the hour and minute hands are actually printed on sapphire discs instead of connected with the movement. That’s because the Central Tourbillon’s hands cannot be mounted on a central shaft in the conventional way.
I was shocked by this finding. So does it mean that the watch hands are just fake and still? If that were the case, then I would say Omega really goes too far to make an eye-catching watch as they sacrifice the basic function of a watch. Fortunately, Omega is not that stupid. The sapphire crystal disks are made to rotate around the dial. This makes the watch very mysterious as the watch hands appear to float above the movement without attaching to anything. Interesting!
Although the Thomas Prescher Mysterious Automatic Double Axis Tourbillon also claim be the first watch with central tourbillon, but the OMEGA Skeletonized Tourbillon Co-Axial Platinum obviously looks much better. It is not only an assertion of Omega’s cutting-edge watchmaking technology, but also the demonstration of Omega’s deep understanding about the design aesthetics.
The Omega Skeletonized Tourbillon Co-Axial Platinum is limited to only 18 pieces globally and will be on exhibition at the Baselworld Fair next month. Apparently this is not affordable for you and me. For us, Omega replicas are more reasonable choices. See our replica Omega collection