Jacob & Co.’s $780,000 Watch Is A Heavenly Feat Of Horology
This galactic-themed collector’s item is an interstellar wonder.
Limited to just 18 examples priced at $780,000 apiece, Jacob & Co.’s new Astronomia Maestro Worldtime Tourbillon is astounding even at first glance. Upon further inspection it appears nearly impossible.
Because, just for starters, its miniature globe and astronaut are no mere design flourish—the former acts as the watch’s world time function, while the latter orbits the horological marvel’s Milky Way aventurine dial, rotating around its own axis once every 90 seconds.
The entirely mechanical three-dimensional, 50mm timepiece builds upon Jacob & Co.’s ties to outer space, a healthy obsession of founder Jacob Arabo. In 2014 the company introduced the celestial-themed Astronomia Tourbillon, featuring an exposed vertical movement with four arms rotating around a central gear.
Last year Arabo called it not only the “most important watch to my company,” but boasted that it “revolutionized high watchmaking.”
The new Astronomia Maestro Worldtime Tourbillon ups the ante considerably. “Adding an exposed minute repeater carillon and taking our exclusive globe of the Earth and turning it into a world- time function is the height of creative high watchmaking,” Arabo says.
“As always, people told us it couldn’t be done and again we proved them wrong…. This watch is as much fun as it is a technical and artistic masterpiece.”
The hand-painted astronaut orbits along with the three other arms of the caliber, passing over the painstakingly detailed Milky Way backdrop. The watch’s four arms also carry the gravitational triple- axis tourbillon. A date and moon-phase display features a bi-color “Jacob-Cut” spherical diamond.
A full rotation on the first axis takes exactly 60 seconds, “as a nod towards the traditional single-axis tourbillon,” the brand says. The second axis of rotation is completed in 90 seconds, while the third is made possible by the ten-minute, four-arm rotating platform of the Astronomia movement.
The Astronomia Maestro’s chiming minute repeater carillon is equally impressive; in what Arabo hails as a horological first, the complication’s three gongs crisscross above the hand-painted Milky Way dial, and are struck by their respective hammers when a slider is activated.
The central-mounted time display subdial is crafted from a combination of aluminum and titanium. And as the pièce de resistance, the watch’s 18K rose gold case features openworked lugs and a single-piece sapphire crystal window around its periphery, al- lowing the wearer to view all the magnificent mechanical wonders of the Swiss-made, in-house JCFM11A caliber within. You might well say this watch is truly out of this world.