This is an example of the Deep Space Tourbillon*, sitting at the intersection of watchmaker Vianney Halter’s love of space exploration and his ruminations on the concept of time. It features a spaceship inspired 46mm titanium case and an incredibly domed crystal under which the theatre of the triple-axis tourbillon takes place. The time display lies on the periphery of the dial. It is powered by the manually wound, double barrel calibre VH113.
Vianney Halter often struggles to translate his ruminations into words and the physical world. He says, “I made the Deep Space Tourbillon because it was easier for me to make a watch than it was to write a book”. At the start of the second decade of the new millennium, his operation shrunken due to the withering effects of the 2008 financial crisis, he worked mostly solitarily and envisioned a marine chronometer for space. “In that it wasn’t designed to tell you the time at all. It was designed to measure distance in time and space from a starting point, or home,” he says.
Working with a designer, he was able to bring that concept to life. At its heart was the triple-axis tourbillon, representative of the three physical dimensions – length, width and depth – suspended in time, the fourth dimension. This is perhaps the only reason for the time-keeping element of the Deep Space Tourbillon.
Halter says, “As children we are taught to read the time. This becomes second nature but it just a simple fact that is true for but a moment. We are seldom taught to ask how and why.”
While such contemplation is the goal, he is even willing to settle for simple distraction. Halter adds, “During the course of the day, you want to read the time, you look at the watch and are taken by this dance in space and time, so much so that maybe you forget to read the time. It is important to remember that this is not really a watch in that sense but more a sculpture.”
While Halter admits the form of the watch might invite the attention of others, they will seldom stay long to experience the contemplation it is designed to evoke. That pleasure is only the wearers’.
