Blancpain Villeret Minute Repeater watch

The Blancpain Villeret Minute Repeater watch is a masterpiece, uniting one of the most prestigious complications in haute horologerie within the framework of a supremely elegant classical form.  The Blancpain legacy, dating back to 1735, has become defined by a devotion to the principles of traditional watchmaking and the furtherance of remarkable complications.  The minute repeater mechanism, developed centuries ago by Daniel Quare, and later improved by Abraham-Louis Breguet, came about as a way to tell the time when the night was not lit by electric light; its intricate mechanism of toothed racks and snails, lovingly assembled and adjusted by a single master watchmaker, translates the time shown by the hands into a series of strikes which indicate the hours, quarter hours, and individual minutes.

The Blancpain Villeret Minute Repeater watch's selfwinding Calibre 35 movement packs over 350 miniscule pieces into a space less than 5 millimeters in height; each piece has been meticulously finished by hand, bridges being decorated with Cotes de Geneve on their topsides, and edges rounded with anglage.  The steel hammers of the repeater are finished with a specular polish. 

The only hint of remarkable mechanism within this deceptively simple-looking watch is the slide lever discreetly concealed against the side of the watch case.  When the lever of the Blancpain Villeret Minute Repeater watch is slid upwards, the wearer is treated to a charming musical performance--the hours sound out with individual low notes, while the quarter hours are represented by an alternation of the high and the low notes, and finally, the individual minutes sound with individual high notes.  By turning the watch over, one can observe the sequence of the hammers as they strike the two gongs which encircle the movement. 

The Blancpain Villeret Minute Repeater watch is presented in a finely polished 38-mm case, with a beautiful opaline dial accented by Roman numerals and leaf-shaped hands crafted from gold.  Produced exclusively in platinum or 18K gold, only a handful of the precious Blancpain Minute Repeater watches leave the workshop in Le Brassus each year.