Basel world continued: Jacquet Dros, the bird repeater!

With a little determination my good friend Brad Taylor (http://taylorhorology.com/) and I got ourselves an impromptu meeting with the head of product development at Jacquet Droz. Not only did we get a rare chance to interact with a brand that we both admire, we also got to see two iterations of Brads personal favourite watch; The bird repeater.

Whats important to note is that this watch is not just a minute repeater that uses the mechanism of the minute repeater complication itself to move the birds, rather it has its own automata complication separate from the minute repeater. The automata complication is an intricate system of cams that produces several actions; one of the birds feeds her young while the other shows off its plumage during such time an egg hatches at their feet revealing a baby chick. All the while a waterfall flows in the background. 8 motions in all make this by far one of the most impressive and complicated watches on the market.

Brad and I got to see both a solid gold version of the watch (which took hundreds of hours to engrave!) and  a stripped out version that lets you see more of the mechanism behind the show.

 Brad with the dial-less repeater

 all gold errethang

 what a spread!

oh and by the way each watch cost almost 500 thousand Swiss franks each!
As my photos hardly do any justice to these beautiful pieces here is a link to the site; http://www.jaquet-droz.com/the-bird-repeater/en/


more to come from the workshop soon!