The backdrop for the dial of this new watch designed to mark the day of love and romance is a mother-of-pearl sky sprinkled with 19 diamonds and four rubies, all brilliant-cut and secured using the “star-setting” technique. This type of gemsetting involves using a metal base in order to drive the stone into the dial. For the very first time in the Blancpain collections, the exquisite sapphire moon phase has been placed at a sloping angle at 6 o’clock. It is adorned with a slender border and the opening features a softly rounded shape. This moon with its unmistakably feminine face is an amusing nod to history, since the artificial mole of “beauty spot”, known as a mouche for its similarity to a fly appearing at the corner of its smiling mouth, was regarded in 18th century France as symbolizing a playfully teasing attitude. Mouches were used by ladies of the Court as a message to their suitors that differed according to where these coquettish signs were placed.
The moon phase is a horological complication that had almost vanished from the scene until Blancpain reintroduced it in the early 1980s. Since then, it has become a signature of the Manufacture. The depiction of the lunar cycle on the dial of this watch evokes the ancestral ties between watchmaking and astronomy. The face of the moon corresponds to the current lunar phase. The mechanism consists of a 59-tooth wheel, the equivalent of two complete 29.5-day lunar cycles, which is why the moon appears twice on the disk driven by this wheel. The minutes and hours hands are shaped like cut-out sage leaves, while the seconds hand takes the form of a Cupid’s arrow.
The steel case measures 29.20 mm in diameter. Its bezel is adorned with 48 diamonds and the lugs with 20, while the crown is set with an imposing rose-cut diamond.
Cutting-edge technical sophistication
At the heart of this model beats the self-winding 913 L movement. The latter is equipped with a glucydur balance wheel fitted with gold micrometric regulating screws and a balance spring in silicon. This material recently introduced within the watch industry offers several important advantages. Firstly, its low density makes it lighter and thus more shock-resistant. In addition, it is impervious to magnetic fields. The resulting balance spring is ideally shaped, thereby ensuring improved isochronism performance of the movement and resulting in enhanced timekeeping precision.
The sapphire caseback of this watch conceals a secret reserved for its owner, since the rhodium-plated yellow gold oscillating weight is adorned with a heart pierced by countless sunbeams as well as an arrow.
This Villeret Valentine’s Day model, fitted with a vivid red alligator leather strap, is available in a limited edition of 99 individually engraved and numbered watches.
