The Third Dimension
H Moser & Cie’s Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon is a new direction for the independent brand that showcases its technical proficiency.
OF LATE, H MOSER & CIE has let its watchmaking and design do the talking. The independent brand had mastered these long ago, but they have sometimes been overshadowed by its irreverent and provocative cheese- or plant-based one-offs. Not so these days; behind recent hits such as the Streamliner collection and the much-applauded collaboration with MB&F, the brand is – dare it be said – maturing.
The Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton (CHF79,000) is H Moser & Cie’s next move. It is the brand’s first skeleton watch and the first of a modern interpretation. The skeletonised calibre HMC 811 features a dark finish and there is a flying tourbillon at six o’clock.
The technical highlight is the cylindrical hairspring, which dances at the heart of every mechanical watch and is something of a pinnacle benchmark for a manufacture. It is a difficult component to make and only a handful of entities in Switzerland have that capability. H Moser & Cie, through its sister company Precision Engineering, is one of them.
Unlike the usual flat, spiral hairsprings, cylindrical hairsprings have a height, like a spring. Its concentric nature and two Breguet curves (one at each attachment point) make it a more consistent oscillator than the flat hairspring. It is not a new invention – it was common in marine chronometers centuries ago – but one of the many challenges in creating this was to make it compact enough to fit in a wristwatch. It also takes a lot more time to make and there is a high rate of defects that have to be discarded. “We had to develop a lot of knowledge,” says Edouard Meylan, CEO of H Moser & Cie, noting that it took a couple of years of production before the brand was able to produce high-quality cylindrical hairsprings.
One of the main motivations behind this movement, Meylan adds, was to show the world what the brand can do. “It’s part of the knowledge of Moser. We do our own hairsprings. We don’t go to somebody else. We do amazing things for others. Why not show it to the public?” he says. Precision Engineering has supplied cylindrical hairsprings to other manufactures, but the first time it went to an in-house timepiece was in 2020 for the Endeavour Cylindrical Tourbillon, a collaboration with MB&F. That limited edition was an exploration of three-dimensionality, and this philosophy is further explored by the Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton. The entire watch was designed with the cylindrical hairspring in mind – its height is an integral part of the composition. The dark grey bridges of the movement thus have depth to their architecture,
The Endeavour Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton uses the same movement as the Pioneer, but the case is in red gold, with details such as the crown in the Endeavour’s traditional style.
while the Funky Blue fume subdial at 12 o’clock is curved and has prominently raised ceramic-based lumed markers. The steel case is just under 43mm in diameter, while the domed sapphire crystal raises the height to 15.3mm – without the sapphire, it is a more wearable 11.7mm thick. In keeping with the sportiness of the Pioneer collection, the watch is water resistant to 120m.
Thanks to its recognisable design codes, the brand uses a translucent logo or often drops it from the dial, but this is not the case for the Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton. “This is the first time we are venturing into this. It’s kind of new for Moser, so (we wanted to) make sure people know,” Meylan explains.
H Moser & Cie enjoys a burgeoning demand, but collectors in Malaysia and Singapore have a different avenue to get a similar watch. In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Cortina Watch, the brand has produced the Endeavour Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton in a limited run of 10 pieces. It uses the same movement, but the case is in red gold, with details such as the crown in the Endeavour’s traditional style. The subdial has no lume and instead sports gold leaf-shaped hands, railroad markers and Roman numerals. There is a different mood to this watch – while the Pioneer’s contemporary styling was in sync with the modernity of the movement, the proposition with the Endeavour Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton is one of subtle contrast.