Breguet Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Anniversaire 5365

Breguet Watch Review

Today, one can find the time, accurate to fractions of a second, anywhere. A flick to the top right of the screen on which I’m typing this and I can see it. A glance left to the ‘phone, next to my cup of coffee, and there it is again. Even a few years ago, time so pin-sharp and democratically available would have been unthinkable, yet this digital measuring of milliseconds doesn’t give us any more wonder or pause than the operation of our washing machine. Perhaps that’s because there’s no beauty to it – no joy or art. If we were purely rational souls, though, it would be enough. Thank goodness we are not and there is a place for watches like this one. They show us that, even if we have already found a way to do something efficiently and soullessly, that is no reason to stop trying to do it beautifully. 

Breguet Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Anniversaire 5365 – limited to 35 pieces

The modern firm bearing his name has, 220 years after Abraham Louis Breguet’s original patent, decided to make just 35 of these Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Anniversaire 5365 watches. Why 35 you may ask? A number properly respectful of Breguet père, who made 35 tourbillon watches. Some people use ‘just’ in a sentence like that, but Breguet conceived the idea, prototyped it through Nos 169 and 282 and finally commercially hand-built the watches until he died in 1823. A record like that doesn’t deserve a ‘just’ or an ‘only’. 

The origins of Breguet’s tourbillon

George Daniels was convinced that Breguet had the idea for the tourbillon while he was hiding out in Switzerland in 1793 avoiding guillotine-happy France. Revolutionary Paris was not the ideal spot for someone known as a watchmaker to royalty and the well-heeled. It took him several years and a couple of experimental models to work out the practicalities (one of which went to his friend, chronometer maker John Arnold) before he took out a patent for his tourbillon in Paris on 7 Messidor An IX; that’s June 26, 1801 unless you’re one of those die-hards still using revolutionary time. Rather wonderfully, his No 282 from this period has the words, ‘Whirling About Regulator’ on its dial – an apt description. 

Mind you, the term ‘Tourbillon’ has nothing to do with terrestrial whirlwinds, it derives instead from Descartes’ description of the planets revolving around the sun in a vortex. Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie used it to describe the movement of planets around a single axis. As a nailed-on part of The Enlightenment, these are the uses with which Breguet would be far more familiar. Typically for Breguet, it’s a neat bit of brand-feature naming too.

The tourbillon negates the positional effects of gravity

Like all Breguet’s inventions, the genius of his tourbillon comes from its simplicity. Until the twentieth century, you’d carry your watch vertically in a pocket or prop it up on your desk in the same position. Unlike a modern wristwatch, this meant the effect of gravity on the balance was pronounced and your watch would slowly start to lose time. Even Breguet couldn’t change gravity, but he could minimise its effects. Why not make the balance and the escapement rotate together slowly through 360 degrees over (usually) one, four or six minutes? That way, the positional effects of gravity would even out.

Breguet Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Anniversaire 5365 design language

The Breguet cues are all here with the Classique – the tourbillon, of course, but also the full guilloché dial, the coin-edging to the case, the hands and the lugs, all classically understated.  The cleverness is there too, particularly if you’re a horophile who enjoys fine watchmaking detail and references to Breguet’s past, but it’s also a watch that even someone who doesn’t know a tourbillon from a turbot would enjoy.

The case is a wrist-friendly 41 mm in diameter and cut from a piece of rose gold. The edges are, as you’d expect, fluted or coin-edged. What’s not so obvious is that the lugs are welded rather than produced as part of a casting process. They’re also designed to take screw-in strap bars. None of those bourgeois springy things. The crystal and caseback are both sapphire and it’s pretty debatable which way round you should wear your Classique. If you’re interested in the time, go for dial-out, but it’s a tough choice with a movement this interesting.

Breguet Classique Tourbillon 5365 dial

If you’re opting for dial-out, it’s worth a closer examination. Looks simple, doesn’t it?  But as ever, it’s proof that simple doesn’t mean easy. The dial is actually made in four parts, each finished in a slightly different way. The chapter ring that carries the thin, Roman hour markers is applied. It’s also not quite a complete circle; see where it meets the tourbillon aperture between four and six o’clock? Imagine trying to cut an arc of silvered gold that thin, apply a narrow line of graining by hand, then get it to sit perfectly on a watch dial. While you’re at it, you’ll need to be handy with a diamond-tipped pantagraph to add the Breguet ‘secret signature’ twice either side of the XII at the top of the dial. It’s OK, we’ll wait. Then you’ll need to do the same for the two halves of the tourbillon’s surround but with a slightly different treatment.  The words “Brevet No 157” on it reference Breguet’s original tourbillon patent number.

Then there are more areas to cover; the centre of the dial uses the Clous de Paris technique.  Each of those interlaced lines is just 0.25 mm in pitch. You’ll need your diamond-tipped chisel for that and best lay off the espresso just before you start turning the handle on your guilloché machine. One slip and the dial’s toast.  Around the edge, Breguet has switched to their almost-trademark grain d’orge (or “barley grain”) motif – hand-turned again.

This isn’t just for show – although what a show – it’s practical engineering. Guillochage allows each area of the dial to reflect the light differently, making each zone stand out so it’s easy to read. Polishing is lovely, but it also tarnishes faster than a guilloché surface. Just to give you an idea of how obsessive Breguet’s watchmakers are, if you ask, they’ll also explain that guillochage’s raised surfaces “…collect the microdust that could have degraded the chronometric performance of the first pocket watches more than two centuries ago.” It also makes the dial appear matte from the usual distance you’d read your watch, making the hands stand out more clearly. That’s helped by them being blued, too, like the upper tourbillon bridge. Notice the tourbillon capstone? Usually a red ruby, right? Not here – it’s a blue sapphire, matching the hands and upper bridge. That tourbillon cage also doubles as a small seconds. So much thought and craft packed into something less than 40mm wide. 

Breguet Classique Calibre 581

From an engineering point of view, the cal 581 movement is able to fit its 334 parts in a case measuring a gnat’s whisker under 7.5 mm because it uses a platinum rotor (for greater inertia) that runs around the outside edge of the case. A standard rotor would obscure the bridges; the sort of sin that would need to catch Saint Abraham in an exceptionally charitable mood to avoid rapid downward passage to watchmaking hell. The weight turns on three separate tiny ball-bearing cages each containing nine minute bearings. As the whole plot rotates, it puts power into the 80 hour barrel. That power, in turn, ends up being controlled by the tourbillon in its titanium carriage which houses a silicon escape wheel with a flat silicon balance spring. No lubrication fuss here – so no lubricant to pick up dust, dry out and muck up the timekeeping.

From an aesthetic angle, those bridges are the canvas for a series of engraved images and details that only the most Breguetty of Breguet nerds will pick up on. Details of his 1801 Paris tourbillon patent straddle the going-train and winding bridges along with the Revolutionary Calendar date on the rear of the tourbillon cage. Rather wonderfully, the screw securing the cage pinion on the original patent drawing has been engraved to merge with one of the real screws on the winding bridge.

Breguet Classique Tourbillon Extra-Plat Anniversaire 5365 – closing thoughts

With the Classique you get something of everything – proper watchmaking engineering, Breguet details, an elegance and style of design that’s unique to the firm and, perhaps best of all, visible, ticking proof that life isn’t all about cold-hearted efficiency.