Feature of the Month - Vianney Halter's Deep Space Tourbillon

It is not everyday one gets to meet a watchmaking legend and I was lucky enough to meet the man - Mr. Vianney Halter. Watchmaker extraordinaire - a legend and a true artist. That is why he is The Feature of the Month.

In town to launch his new Deep Space Tourbillon, I was lucky to handle his latest creation. I am sure by now Vianney will be used to words like Creative, Visionary, Genius just to name a few, I must say the Deep Space Tourbillon (DST) is a departure from his often recognized rivet style watches. But what a departure!

The DST as taken from the press kit. Many watch brands start a "new" watch by developing what they want. If they want to make a tourbillon watch, they go design a tourbillon. With Vianney, he started with a blank sheet and sought inspiration and as with many creative souls took themselves away from the main field just so they will not be saturated by their surroundings. The result is a space inspired watch which represents time in four dimensions.

Vianney feels that to represent those four dimensions is to use a tourbillon - a triple axis tourbillon at that. Three axes - up, down and depth all difficult to differentiate in outer space due to the lack of gravity. And the fourth dimension is Time. The tourbillon (1st axis) rotates in 40 seconds while the "Rotisserie" like main carriage (2nd axis) rotates in 6 minutes and the watch's main plate rotates in 30 minutes (3rd axis). Mesmerizing is the only words I can use to describe the movement of the tri-axis tourbillon. The picture of the tourbillon from the press kit.

On the hand, the watch is lighter and smaller than one anticipates. The titanium case ensures the lightness and the dome-shaped sapphire glass gives the watch an out of this world feeling. Wears well on the wrist even as it measures 46mm in diameter. The manual winding in-house VH 113 calibre has a power reserve of 55 hours.

My poor attempt at capturing the watch. Apologies as I had not brought my camera - not sure if it would have made much difference given my skills…

Many thanks to The Hourglass for hosting the event and the invite. After several years of hiatus, THE MAN IS BACK! Deep Space Tourbillon is the result when Inspiration meets a talented Genius.