Roger Dubuis 42 Skeleton Automatic men’s watch in black DLC titanium 42mm case, featuring skeletonised automatic self winding movement with micro-rotor and sapphire crystals front and back, on black leather strap with folding clasp.

Established as recently as 1995 by master watchmaker and visionary Roger Dubuis, his eponymous Geneva based watch Company has firmly cemented a reputation for absolutely exquisite watchmaking, achieving one of the industry’s most cherished and hard-won standards, the seal of the revered Poinçon de Genève, awarded only to practitioners of the very finest levels of craftsmanship, technical innovation and exemplary finishing.

In the Roger Dubuis Excalibur 42 Skeleton Automatic, the fine art of skeletonisation has been taken to an extraordinary, obsessive level, and to make the most of the supreme workmanship within, the watch features no dial. Where the majority of skeletonised watches use an existing base calibre, this, the very first self winding skeleton movement from the Roger Dubuis Manufacture is designed specifically from the outset.

For the technically minded and for those who appreciate such fastidious attention to detail, it’s a real feast for the eyes. With front and rear sapphire crystals allowing a light-filled and unimpeded view of its inner workings, its charcoal coloured rhodium plated bridges and plates are reduced to little more than silhouettes, every one of its 167 components being fully exposed, displaying the meticulous hand finishing throughout.

Indeed it’s only on a closer study that one can appreciate the tiny micro-rotor, whose motion induced spinning maintains the power reserve whilst on the wrist. Stripped to its bare essentials, it’s easy then to comprehend the mechanical puzzle, as the running gear train is beautifully laid out, and it’s tiny parts are all contained within a delicate charcoal framework with circular graining, and which emanates and spans out across the display from the star above the open spring barrel.