Tourbillon Plasma Ceramic - Oberalp:
A V12 watchmaking symphony
A new chapter in the story linking Jaquet Droz with the Supercar Owners Circle: a private collector, a member of the prestigious club, receives his unique tourbillon piece - sketched in a single night by the brand’s designers. An original story of shared passion, of personal connection with each client and of supercars conquering Alpine passes.
Every Jaquet Droz watch is as unique as its owner. But some stories are different. Like the one that brings together this lover of exceptional supercars, a member of the Supercar Owners Circle (SOC) and Jaquet Droz, which partners with it during its meetings in Switzerland.
After a few high-speed bends in the Andermatt region and over the Oberalp Pass, the base camp for the SOC’s spring excursions, drivers and collectors of the finest supercars gather for a moment of connection and fine dining. Jaquet Droz has been present alongside the SOC for the past two years. Their CEOs, designers and clients share the same values: authenticity, proximity, excellence and, naturally, a passion for fine engineering. At the end of the meal, a collector shared with the Jaquet Droz team his passion for his new Italian machine, a magnificent V12, coveted by purists as one of the last of its kind still in production worldwide. A machine that comes close to perfection, combining the comfort of a grand tourer with the performance of a supercar.
An initial design produced in a single night
That was all it took to spark the creativity of the Jaquet Droz designers. At the end of the dinner, the team went away to work on various projects capable of embodying the passion of the lucky owner. To his great surprise, he was able to view the first sketches the very next morning.
From that moment, as with any unique piece, the co-creation process began. The owner and workshop exchanged ideas, refined the design and defined the choice of materials and techniques that would shape the final result. Jaquet Droz’s Studio 8 was brought into the equation: between two trips to La Chaux-de-Fonds, the client connected remotely to the workshop’s 4K cameras to follow the prototyping stages and validate the technical approaches.
Very early on, he was able to finalize his choices: a ceramic case for strength and lightness, echoing the aluminum chassis of his Italian machine. Jaquet Droz offered him the option of Plasma Ceramic. This in-house specialty produces a matte, delicately sandblasted ceramic in asphalt gray, while the base material is white - an exclusive offering achieved through firing at over 20,000°C. The chosen diameter was 42 mm, on a signature yellow strap with a mixed folding clasp (ceramic and steel). As a lover of fine mechanics, the client naturally opted for the Jaquet Droz 8-Day Tourbillon. The workshop reproduced the two-tone aesthetic of this model (black and silver), with a polished tourbillon standing out against a movement finished in black galvanic treatment.
On the dial side, the emphasis was placed on traditional métiers d’art, with a motif created entirely by hand in miniature painting. The decoration was executed on a sapphire crystal plate set over a gold dial base. It depicts the supercar in the foreground on the iconic bend of the Oberalp Pass, with the snow-capped peaks of Andermatt in the background. But the greatest challenge would only be visible to the collector himself: the oscillating weight.
The most complex oscillating weight in the world?
His wish was to reproduce a wheel rim from his model. However, they are among the most complex in the automotive world, made from alloy with an aerodynamic profile, and fitted with an iconic yellow center cap that would be highly complex to reproduce. The Jaquet Droz artisans got to work. To enhance its kinetic movement, they opted for white gold. The 6 spokes of the “oscillating wheel rim” were profiled across multiple levels, with a helical geometry. The level of difficulty was extraordinary. According to the Jaquet Droz teams, no rotor of such complexity had ever been machined in the history of Haute Horlogerie. An unprecedented challenge that makes an already unique piece… even more unique.
