Watches and Wonders features the best novelties that the brands put out for the year. Given the fierce competition, it can be hard to pick a favourite.
And then Parmigiani Fleurier said “hold my ” and introduced the Tonda PF Chronographe Mysterieux. At first glance, it looks like a normal chronometer, where the rose gold hour-and-minute hands (and the seconds hand) sweep the Mineral Blue Grain d’Orge guilloché dial. So far, everything seems to be on the up-and-up.
Then, you depress the monopusher at 7:30 o’clock and a pair of rhodium-plated hands swoops out from beneath the time-telling ones, snaps to high noon before it starts timing. Voila! The chronometer is now a chronograph.
A second press of the monopusher and the chronograph hands stop; a third press, returns them to hide beneath the main hands. All this occurs as the civil hands continue their steady tour around the dial.
To illustrate the difficulty of having something like the Tonda PF Chronographe Mysterieux to even exist, imagine your simple chronometer, where its basic function is to tell time. That’s the base movement. But now you want it to also have a stopwatch capability, so a chronograph movement is added over the base movement. This requires new gears and clutches. Activating the chronograph requires side pushers, usually at 2 o’clock (start-and-stop)and 4 o’clock (to reset); subdials are supplemented to register the elapsed time. And don’t get me started on the different kinds of chronographs, like having a flyback feature or a Rattrapante—the more complex the chronograph, the more complicated and stacked are its movements. This is why most chronographs are thicc.
But that’s not Parmigiani Fleurier’s vibe. Their approach is subtlety in their watches, where minimalism is prized over ostentatious display. So, how do you have a chronograph but without the extraneous pushers and subdials? You redesign the coaxial hand system so that the chronograph hands remain hidden behind the main time-telling hands until they are needed.
An integrated column-wheel monopusher chronograph called Calibre PF063 was developed. The average modern chronograph uses a vertical clutch. For the Chronographe Mysterieux, it has a complex, coaxial 5-hand system that utilises a world-first triple-clutch construction (one vertical and two horizontal clutches). All these are housed in a 40mm stainless steel case and a platinum bezel with a 13mm thickness. The watch also has a 60-hour power reserve.