Watchmakers mark the Year of the Rat
Blancpain spent five years researching and developing its Chinese calendar complication
While the Gregorian calendar marks a new beginning on Jan 1 of every year, the Chinese New Year falls on a different date each year, following the lunar cycle and the addition of a leap month to the Chinese calendar every two to three years.
Each month lasts about 29.53 days — hence, a year of 12 lunar months is about 11 days shorter than a solar year. Beginning on Jan 25, the Year of the Rat will then end on Feb 11, 2021.
Blancpain’s haute horlogerie references age-old Chinese astrology, by felicitously featuring the first zodiac animal on a mechanical masterpiece as well as a métiers d’art special edition.
The masterpiece is the world’s first watch with a Chinese calendar, launched in 2012, under the Villeret collection, which boasts Blancpain’s refined classicism and groundbreaking complications.
More intriguing than the perpetual calendar, the Traditional Chinese Calendar complication took five years of research and development, in order to incorporate main indications of the lunar calendar and date based on the solar Gregorian calendar.
This was a technical feat because the basic unit of these two systems are not the same.
The Chinese calendar is based on a system that subdivides the day into 12 double hours, instead of 24 hours composed of 60 minutes each, as in the Gregorian calendar.
Each of these double hours is named, in successive order, after one of the 12 earthly branches and represented by one of the 12 Chinese zodiac animals.
Showing the numbers and symbols, the double hours counter is positioned below an aperture housing the Rat at 12 o’clock, on the new version of the Traditional Chinese Calendar wristwatch.
Chinese astrology’s 10 celestial pillars and five elements are displayed at 3 o’clock. On the opposing subdial, two hands indicate the date and month of the lunisolar calendar and a tiny aperture shows an intercalary month.
Below the subdials, a disc reproduces the moon phases, which determine the months of the Chinese calendar.
Familiar hour and minute hands provide the time, while a blued steel serpentine hand points to the date according to the Gregorian calendar.
The sophisticated complication is driven by a self-winding movement with the Rat engraved on the white gold oscillating weight, embellished with a cabochon-cut ruby.
A limited edition of 50 pieces, the latest
Traditional Chinese Calendar is presented in a 45mm platinum case, with a cabochon-cut ruby adorning the crown.
Each piece was meticulously assembled and adjusted by hand, by a single master-watchmaker in the Grandes Complications workshop at Blancpain Manufacture in Le Brassus, a village in the Vallée de Joux, Switzerland.
In parallel, artisans in the Métiers d’Art workshops have mastered various ancestral and decorative techniques as well as honed additional craftsmanship.
They worked on perfecting Blancpain’s first porcelain dials for the Year of the Rat special edition, powered by an automatic movement.
Requiring dexterity and patience, crafting the delicate dials involves several steps punctuated by long drying and firing phases.
A powder mainly composed of quartz, feldspar and kaolin, porcelain is first diluted in water. The resulting pulp is sieved and filtered to remove residues and impurities, prior to being cast in moulds. The dials are then dried for 24 hours before being fired at 1,000C for the same length of time.
Enamelling savoir-faire then vitrifies the porcelain, making it shiny, translucent and enduringly stable.
Three little rats and decoration are painted freehand with an extremely fine brush, followed by another lengthy, 1,200C firing stage to fix the colours of the enamel painting on the porcelain dial.
Housed in a 33.2mm diamond-set whitegold case, the Métiers d’Art Porcelaine is available in only eight pieces, a lucky number in Chinese culture.
‘‘Each month lasts about 29.53 days — hence, a year of 12 lunar months is about 11 days shorter than a solar year