2023-09-01 22:05:07
Ulysse Nardin unveils a Blast Free Wheel whose dial is in silicon marquetry. An exceptional finery for a movement that remains one of the most creative of the manufacture
It was six years ago. Maybe seven. The date is not very precise. The place is more: the Ulysse Nardin factory, during a visit dedicated to its long chronometric history. It is there, at the bend of a workbench, that we see a strange object. A bare movement, without a box. The astonished visitor stops, asks a question or two regarding this strange caliber equipped with a dial, but which the main organs seem to cross from side to side, emerging like islands, almost disconnected from its motor cogs. An original construction that came up once morest a categorical embargo from the manufacture. Reason: ongoing project, major novelty, no communication. This project would become, a few months later, the Free Wheel.
Assemblage de la Blast Free Wheel Marquetry © Ulysse Nardin
For the discerning collector
What is it regarding ? A pure Ulysse Nardin object: very creative, never seen before, with a strong technical dimension. A piece that establishes a point between the contemporary visions of the house, as the first Blasts would become and, on the other side, the unclassifiable Freaks. But make no mistake regarding it: the Free Wheel is already a piece for the informed collector, for those who like to think outside the box to explore, today, what the horological aesthetics of tomorrow might be.
In the Free Wheel spirit, we find something of Louis Moinet. The Saint-Blaise workshop, in 2016, unveiled a superb Memoris whose particularity was to switch, on the dial side, the entire chronograph complication. The rest of the movement remained sheltered under the plate, as is customary.
The Free Wheel appropriates this concept and pushes it much further: on the surface of the dial no longer emerge a specific complication, but all of the organs of its movement, with a few cogs as a bonus. A hybrid, striking piece, where part of the caliber seems to float above the dial, as if disconnected from its intimate mechanics. Disconcerting, singular, particularly daring and technically very successful.
Dress of light
Around this game of hide and seek, Ulysse Nardin today unveils a new interpretation of its Free Wheel (since integrated into the Blast collection). She gives pride of place to the factory’s favorite material, silicon, which she recomposes here in marquetry.
Blast Free Wheel Marquetry © Ulysse Nardin
The idea is not new. Ulysse Nardin had already explored this path in 2019, then once more in 2021, with a Freak X (read it here). This is therefore the third iteration of a piece with a dial in silicon marquetry, an exercise that is always very complicated to implement due to the extremely friable nature of the material.
Of the three pieces, the Blast Free Wheel is perhaps the most demonstrative, thanks to a 45mm case that allows this singular art to fully express itself. For him, Ulysse Nardin has developed a glass box glass which magnifies its presence. It covers a case also in sapphire, thus opening up a side view of the movement, as found in Hublot sapphire cases or, more classically, through the side windows of cases signed Ferdinand Berthoud. And since good ideas are most often shared, it is none other than Louis Moinet who has also just unveiled a unique piece for Only Watch, whose dial is made of a silicon wafer!
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