Chronoswiss Open Gear ReSec Paraiba
The Chronoswiss Open Gear ReSec Paraiba has just been unveiled at Watches & Wonders 2021. Its hand guilloché dial features a short-wave pattern, while its epidermis is enlivened with green tones that transition into blue and violet shades depending on the position the watch is held. This vibrancy has been achieved using ultra-modern CVD coating. It is equipped with a regulator-type display, featuring a dominant minute hand, off-centre hours indication and a retrograde seconds indication.
Chronoswiss, the Lucerne-based brand founded in 1983, was acquired by Oliver Ebstein in 2012. One year later, in 2013, Maik Panziera joined the company as Head of Design and the brand subsequently adopted the strapline ‘Modern Mechanical’. When introduced, these two words perfectly conveyed the brand’s new positioning.
In its early years, Chronoswiss produced classically styled watches. However, with the arrival of Oliver Ebstein and Maik Panziera, the firm chose to retain some original design elements but wholeheartedly embrace neoteric styling. Dials revealed many mechanical components usually hidden from view and the company chose to make them a prominent design feature moving forward. Moreover, the dials often encompassed numerous levels imbuing each horological canvas with alluring depths.
But, most notable of all, Chronoswiss has become synonymous with vibrantly hued guilloché dials. The resultant displays found on these models combine traditional hand guilloché, first seen in the late 18th century, with ultra-modern, eye-popping tones. These dials are made using a manually operated rose-engine lathe that is nearly one hundred years old. Today, such machines are no longer made, hence those lathes still in existence are cherished by their owners.
Chronoswiss has repeatedly juxtaposed traditional details with the latest technology. Rather than impart colours to dials using conventional galvanic treatment, it has used CVD (Chemical Vapour Deposition). The resultant surface exhibits an unparalleled vibrancy and, depending on the dial motif used, often evinces a multitude of different shades.
When imparting different motifs to a dial, Chronoswiss has played with the lengths of each wave or line. For example, it recently launched the Open Gear ReSec Big Wave which features gently curving lines. With the advent of the Chronoswiss Open Gear ReSec Paraiba, the company has endowed the dial with a short wave guilloché pattern. The resultant horological vista is said to resemble a Paraiba tourmaline, a stone closely linked with Brazil. The dial transitions from ‘jungle-dark green; from petrol blue to blue violet’.
The Chronoswiss Open Gear ReSec Paraiba is equipped with a regulator-type display, featuring a dominant minute hand, off-centre hours indication and a retrograde seconds indication.
Once again, the Swiss luxury marque has delivered something new and exciting.
The brand’s press release
“Chronoswiss is the only brand with colour-shifting, handmade guilloché. And you cannot simulate this effect in any way – you simply have to experiment,” says Chronoswiss head of design Maik Panziera.
After months of testing a plethora of treatments, colouring agents, lacquers, finishes, patterns and materials, the most stunning result came from a secret, unique type of nano-decorative chemical vapour deposition. The relentless experimenting also led to the conclusion that the light reflection achieved with a short-wave guilloché pattern executed by hand in the Lucerne atelier was fundamental to achieving this mesmerising effect. “When the prototype finally came back from the lab, I instantly thought of the Paraiba tourmaline, one of the world’s rarest gemstones unique to the north-eastern Brazilian state,” continues Panziera, who was goldsmith for two decades before switching to watches. Mimicking the different varieties of the Paraiba tourmaline, when you turn the watch in the light, the display of the timepiece – a hybrid between dial and a functional module board – changes from a soft, tropical lagoon turquoise to jungle-dark green; from petrol blue to blue violet. Through this unique mix of traditional handmade guilloche and innovative use of CVD, Chronoswiss is able to recreate the wonders of nature in a modern mechanical way.
The rest of the Open Gear ReSec Paraiba is packed with Chronoswiss characteristics, such as a regulator set-up with separated hours, minutes and seconds – in this case a 120-degree retrograde second in a conscious allusion to a 17th-century invention. “With the open gear solution we show how the regulator functions. Normally this part of a watch is not visible, but exposing these three wheels that drive the hour hand is a beautiful way to reveal the complication we pioneered back in1988. To me it is like the Ferrari models that have a transparent display of the engine,” laughs Panziera.
Add to that the typically knurled bezel and an abundance of fine finishes and grains, including a circular satin finish on the funnelled hour ring and a horizontally sanded plate revealing the number of the limited edition of 50 timepieces.
Says owner and director Oliver Ebstein about the Open Gear ReSec Paraiba: “Shifting colours, a regulator set-up, a retrograde second and exposed mechanics – since Chronoswiss is an independent family company we don’t have to compromise. We have more freedom to experiment to find such unique solutions for our limited series of watches.”
Further reading