FP Journe reveal their new collaborative prototype watch at Only Watch 2021 that tells the time using an automaton rather than traditional dial hands.
This watch is a celebration of the automatic Octa Calibre 1300 which just saw its 20th anniversary. This calibre also told the time via an automaton and was powered solely by the movement’s mainspring.
This automaton was inspired by Ambroise Paré, often called the father of modern surgery. The hand, quite literally in this case, tells the time by the fingers appearing and disappearing to indicate the hour. To tell the minutes, there is a rotating disk indicator that goes around the bezel.
The FFC Blue took about two years in order to refine the idea alone, then it took a whole seven years of development to get it where it is now.
François-Paul Journe (the brands namesake), said of the watch,
“This watch was born in 2012 while having dinner at Francis Ford Coppola’s house in the Napa Valley. He asked me if it could be possible to tell time with a hand in a watch. I replied that the idea was interesting and required thinking about it. But how to display 12 hours with 5 fingers? It was not an easy matter and this complex challenge inspired and motivated me. Once I figured it out, Francis immediately sent the sketches for the fingers’ positions. After more than 2 years, I could finally focus on ‘Fecit.’ After 7 years of development, I am proud to present the FFC prototype.”
This isn’t a collaboration many saw coming as Coppola is a film director, not a watchmaker, but it seems he still has a filmmaker’s vision of creating the impossible.
The 42mm watch is made from Tantalum and 18k rose gold. It features commemorative engravings, 396 components and an orange alligator strap. Of all the colours to choose from, they picked one that makes the watch resemble that Space Jam watch we looked at.
However, this prototype is just a little more expensive than the Space Jam watch, coming in at an estimated $324,000 – $432,000 USD ($439,000 – $585,000 AUD). But once it hits auction, it will likely surpass these estimated by a large margin.
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Read More / 17 December 2021
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