Vacheron Constantin – Les Cabinotiers Minute Repeater Perpetual Calendar
The one-of-a-kind Les Cabinotiers minute repeater perpetual calendar is equipped with a revisited movement: Calibre 1731 QP, combining minute repeater and perpetual calendar functions at the heart of a delightfully slender 42 mm-diameter gold case.
The challenge for the in-house watchmakers lays in pairing two of the most sophisticated horological complications within an ultra-thin movement measuring just 5.70 mm thick, while ensuring precision, reliability and user friendliness. Among the technical feats accompanying the origins of this watch, the Maison’s Les Cabinotiers department developed a perfectly silent strike governor serving to control the cadence of the hammers in striking the gongs.
No less than 438 components, some of them no thicker than a hair’s breadth, compose this sophisticated horological ‘alchemy’ within a mechanical manual-winding movement. Beating at a frequency of 21,600 vibrations per hour (3 Hz) and endowed with a 65-hour power reserve, it drives the full set of hours, minutes, day, date, month, leap-year indication, moon phase and minute repeater functions.
Being the world’s oldest watch manufacturer in continuous activity also means possessing an incredibly rich heritage. It is by drawing on this past and basing itself on the transmission of horological excellence and stylistic research that the Maison consistently defies time.
Any new Vacheron Constantin creation begins with imagining watches bearing a real technical and aesthetic signature.
The new Les Cabinotiers Minute Repeater Perpetual Calendar model is thus the latest in a line of watches that have made their mark on their respective eras. In 1992, Vacheron Constantin presented reference 30020, an exceptional creation combining an hours, quarters and minutes repeating mechanism with a perpetual calendar. In 2013, the Maison launched the famous Calibre 1731, whose name pays tribute to the birth year of Jean-Marc Vacheron: an extremely slim manual-winding minute repeater movement inspired by historical calibres.