No other watch company combines the elegance and sophistication of traditional watchmaking values with contemporary design quite like H. Moser & Cie. Conquering the challenges of achieving that elusive perfect balance of old and new, its watches are effortlessly graceful, refined and always stunning, and in the Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Purity, this most beloved complication is presented in such a simplistic layout, that its technical intricacy is really only apparent to those who already know what they’re looking at.
With its ability to mechanically compute without manual adjustment the day, date, month, year and even leap year, the Perpetual Calendar is one of the oldest and most demanding tests of the watchmaker’s skills, and throughout its 250 years has typically been portrayed on elaborate dials, with its many pointers and functions using most if not all of the available display area. Not so in this instance.
Reduced to its very basest essentials, the dial on the H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Purity could not be further away from the classic configuration of the complication, and beneath the domed sapphire crystal, at first glance there is nothing to suggest that inside beats a heart of such innovative complexity. Without hour markers, save only for a pair of applied indices at the 12 and the 6 o’clock positions, the dial is almost austere in its appearance. Even the one constant on any watch dial, the manufacturer’s branding, has been sacrificed in the pursuit of absolute purity, yet this minimalist credo only adds to the overall sense of timeless luxury, and is surely the embodiment of the idiom which decrees that ‘less is more’.
What we are left with however are hours and minutes, with elegant leaf shaped hands, and a recessed small seconds subdial at the six. A large square aperture at the three displays the flash date, and across at the nine another pointer indicates the power reserve. The perpetual calendar functionality is discreet to the point of being hidden in plain view, as only a tiny central pointer hints at something more complex than the time and date. It is in fact the month indicator, and it counts off the passing months using the 1 – 12 points on the dial.
Inside the sculpted 42mm white gold case beats Moser’s manufacture calibre HMC 321 manual winding movement, which is entirely created in house. Viewed through the sapphire caseback, the surface of the movement plates painstakingly hand decorated in Côtes de Genève are revealed, signed off with gold H. Moser crest and detail. The rubies are bedded in mirror-polished chatons, and at its heart is Moser’s own regulating organ and balance with Straumann hairspring, next to the leap year indicator, which is also displayed here on the movement side too.
It is presented on a black alligator leather strap with red inner lining and secured with a white gold folding clasp.
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