Vacheron Constantin @ Patrimony Contemporaine Pocket Watch

Through Vacheron Constantin designers, master-watchmakers, engineers and artisans creations, their mission is to inspire emotions as enduring as those aroused by the discovery of the first pocket watch made by Jean-Marc Vacheron in 1755. Vacheron Constantin has consistently distinguished itself  as is powerfully confirmed by its historical collections in the extraordinary production of pocket watches that are exceptional in terms of their complications, their decoration and their shapes. Pocket watches were initially created to facilitate the everyday lives of their owners who no longer needed to listen to the church bell or check the clock in their home or office in order to know the time. For the first time, symbolising prestige as well as freedom, a watch followed its owner everywhere and became a source of inspiration for horologists. The latter accordingly applied their expertise to making increasingly smaller calibres designed to facilitate use of these timekeeping instruments. Pocket watches in fact merely reflected the state of industrial progress of their times. There are modern ways of making them as water-resistant, accurate and user-friendly as wristwatches. Vacheron Constantin revisits its past and the golden age of the pocket-watch by presenting a model with a pure, classic and timeless design, bearing the prestigious Poinçon de Genève (Hallmark of Geneva).

This distinctive attitude is admirably embodied in the refined gesture of taking out of one’s pocket a supremely understated and sensually curved model, equipped with the Manufacture-made hand-wound 4440 movement and housed inside a brown leather pouch sliding along a leather cord strap or fitted on an original chain with pink gold links. 21st century elegance is no longer just about showing one’s hand, but also about choosing (or not) to reveal hidden depths. Enshrining a new form of modernity, the pocket watch is propelled to the ranks of a beautiful, iconic object. Attached to a pocket, worn on a chain or placed on a desk like a table clock… It is all about a wish to look at time differently rather than simply wearing it on the wrist. With its voluptuously curved yet elegantly slender case in 18K 5N pink gold; its broad, pure opaline silver-toned dial; its pink gold baton-shaped hands and its restrained, delicately applied hour-markers, creative harmony effectively contributes to achieving aesthetic harmony. Developed and crafted according to the most demanding Geneva Fine Watchmaking criteria, the mechanical hand-wound Calibre 4400 is entirely conceived, developed and produced by Vacheron Constantin. Its generous 28.60 mm diameter, magnified by the transparency of the sapphire crystal caseback, is perfectly adjusted to the equally generously sized 43 mm case. Thanks to its imposing barrel, this calibre driving the hour and minutes hands has a power reserve of approximately 65 hours, equivalent to three days.