Nigeria growing middle and upper class with exclusive taste have closer opportunity to experience and adorn the iconic Bovet brand of watches as Polo Limited; the foremost Luxury goods company in West Africa with over 25 years of track record in providing luxury products has signed agreement with Bovet to bring the watches to Nigerian audience.
Out of the array of Bovet’s watches that will immediately create traction among the very rich Nigerian audience is Récital 22 Grand Récital which is a wonderful craftsmanship. This unusual and rare piece has single decorative cold enameling element that is probably most strongly identified with Bovet.
The centerpiece of the watch, according to reports by those closer to the brand, is a hemisphere representing the Earth as seen from above the North Pole. “There are many, many layers of enamel that have been applied to the hemisphere in order to achieve a wonderful kind of translucent effect in which the clouds literally seem to float above the oceans and continents”.
The experts say this particular wristwatch is in a class of, what are called, astronomical complications. “These are timepieces that show, often, the relative position of the stars to an observer standing on Earth, or, in this case, the relative position of the sun and the moon relative to an observer standing on Earth. So the centerpiece is this revolving hand-painted depiction of the upper hemisphere, the northern hemisphere of the Earth”.
Placed just below it, in the six o’clock position, is, what’s called, a tourbillon. “We can see the tourbillon rotating as we look at the watch, and the position that it’s in is identical to the position that the sun would be in, relative to the Earth. So it kind of stands in for, the tourbillon stands in for the sun in this wristwatch”, says a report.
Rotating around the Earth is a spherical depiction of the moon divided into a sunlit hemisphere and a dark hemisphere. And you can read the phase of the moon from the position of this little hemisphere as it rotates around the Earth.
“The back of the watch is also loaded with information. It’s what’s called the perpetual calendar. Now, a perpetual calendar is a mechanical watch which knows the difference between a leap year and a non-leap year, and which also advances the date correctly at the end of each month, whether it’s a 30-day month or a 31-day month”.
Further report said the relative rarity of the watches and the amount of handwork that goes into finishing the movement, the case, and other aspects of the watch all adds up to a tremendous, amount of real old-school craftsmanship, which simply doesn’t come cheap. At this level of watchmaking, you’re really talking about something that’s designed to appeal to someone with extremely specific tastes.
The highly complex timepiece houses a mechanical movement made of nearly 50 individual components, each meticulously hand polished and finished. With a unique case shape that resembles writing desks of yesteryear, the Recital 22 Grand Recital watch offers a real-time view of three key heavenly bodies. A patented double-sided one-minute flying tourbillon cage at 6:00 represents the sun. This complicated tourbillon rotates once every 60 seconds and so Bovet has chosen to affix the seconds hand the carriage wheel to indicate the seconds.
The Bovet Recital 22 Grand Recital holds a remarkable five patents. Conceived of by Bovet 1822 founder Pascal Raffy and brought to life by his team of watchmakers in Switzerland, the watch is a Tellurium Orrery – a working planetarium that brings the Earth, moon and sun to the wrist.
