A Quarter Millennium In, Breguet Still Has a Few Tricks Up Its Sleeve
Breguet marks its 250th year with a pocket watch that unites grand complication mastery and meticulous métiers d'art craftsmanship.
For its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, Breguet has chosen to honour its past with a pocket watch that brings together the ideas and techniques that shaped the manufacture.
The Classique Grande Sonnerie Métiers d'Art 1905 is not an exercise in nostalgia but a watch built with the clarity, restraint and technical substance that define the maison’s best work.
The movement inside this piece is built on inventions that still underpin modern watchmaking. The gong spring, shock absorber, Breguet balance spring and the tourbillon all reappear in a calibre of 539 components, marking the manufacture’s return to grande sonnerie construction after more than twenty years.
The watch unites a grande and petite sonnerie, an on-demand minute repeater and a tourbillon in a layout that prioritises stability and precision.
The dial follows a regulator layout designed for clarity. The hours sit in a grand feu enamel subdial at twelve, the central minutes sweep across horizontal guilloché inspired by the Quai de l'Horloge, and the seconds ride on the tourbillon at half past four.
The petit feu numerals, the visible and hidden signatures and the finely proportioned blued hands give the watch an air of thoughtful refinement rather than decoration for its own sake.
The case reveals the full strength of the maison’s métiers d'art. Breguet gold is engraved, enamelled, and covered with a guilloché pattern that extends even across the curved edges of the covers.
Bleu de France enamel depicts the Seine, anchoring the watch visually to Paris and to Breguet’s early history. Opening the back exposes the reversed striking mechanism, finished by hand with the level of care expected of a milestone creation.
The magnetic regulator is one of the watch’s most distinctive technical features. Using the principle of induced currents, it keeps the tempo of the chimes steady without physical contact, which eliminates the noise associated with traditional regulators.
It brings a welcome sense of modern engineering to a complication founded on centuries of tradition.
The watch is delivered in a marquetry case crafted from the last remaining wood of Marie Antoinette’s oak tree at Versailles. A resonance tray made from rare tonewood from the Risoud forest reinforces the sound of the chimes.
These details add depth rather than sentimentality, complementing a piece that is already rich in craft.
The Classique Grande Sonnerie Métiers d'Art 1905 feels considered in every aspect. It neither overwhelms with ornament nor leans too heavily on history.
Instead, it captures the character of Breguet with clarity and purpose, offering collectors a modern grand complication built on two and a half centuries of continuity.
