Desert Dome: The Trilobe La Folle Journée Dune

Trilobe was founded in 2013 and released its first watch in 2018 (which is already seven years ago, hard to believe) and in that short period of time they’ve established a clear design language and clear identity, based on their unique three ring time display system. It’s difficult to create an entire brand based on a single distinctive time display mechanism, but it can be done – Ressence is one example, with the ROCS system having shown enormous versatility over the years. The basic display system for Trilobe consists of three nested rings; the hours and minutes are read off the two outermost, and the seconds are shown on the most rapidly rotating, innermost ring. Trilobe has used several different methods for indicating the correct time; the first was the use of three trefoils as dial markers.

Typically in Trilobe watches, the rings are set flat on the dial but for 2022, Trilobe launched a watch in which the rings are separated vertically, inside a deeply domed sapphire crystal: La Folle Journée – approximately, “crazy day” in French. In keeping with Trilobe’s habit of naming its watches after works of art and literature, the name is derived from the title of the play, La Folle Journée ou le Mariage de Figaro by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.

If you’re a fan of watchmaking history, there is a little Easter egg in there for you; Beaumarchais was the brother in law of, and coworker with, Jean-Antoine Lépine, known for the invention of the full bridge, extra flat caliber that bears his name. Beaumarchais was successful enough as a watchmaker to at one point be named a purveyor to the King by Louis XV. (He was also an eccentric and colorful person, and was at various points in his eventful life, a revolutionary, spy, publisher, inventor, and arms dealer).

Normally the gearing which  drives the three rings is hidden under the dial but here you can see the driving gears for each of the rings in all their glory. The hour ring is driven on wheel of the same diameter just below it, with inner-facing gear teeth (via gear hidden under the jewel at about 2:00 on the dial) and the minute ring is elevated above the plane of the lower dial by three pillars sitting on a ring of the same diameter, which also has inward facing teeth. The minute ring is supported on its periphery by three roller jewels, mounted on antishock springs and you can see one of the three assemblies between the 45 and 50 markers on the ring. The seconds ring sits on the outer edge of a small circular crystal, and is driven at its center by a series of transmission wheels.

The system was originally developed as a module on an ETA 2892  by Jean-François Mojon of Chronode, for Trilobe’s first watch, Les Matinaux, but in 2020, Trilobe introduced a new movement, the X-Center (a pun on “eccentric,” referring to the eccentric arrangement of the time rings) which was developed in partnership with Le Cercles des Horlogers, in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

There are currently seven different models in the La Folle Journée collection; dimensions across the collection are 40.5mm x 17.8mm, with the height being obviously a deliberate choice thanks to the movement architecture and the high-domed crystal. Titanium is used in most models but rose gold is given as an option as well. Water resistance is a practical 50M although practicality isn’t likely to be the first priority for anyone attracted to Trilobe in general and La Folle Journée in particular; this is an example of the small and difficult genre of watches as wearable works of kinetic art. This model, La Folle Journée “Dune” is named for the sandlike appearance of the grained finish on the dial side of the movement plate.

One of the challenges in designing a movement for the time display, is that the chapter rings and the rings that support them are considerably heavier than convention watch hands, which was one of the reasons for developing the X-Center caliber.

Aesthetically, the movement is a good match for the dial side and for the watch overall; it’s an ample 35.2mm x 6.49mm, running in 33 jewels at 28,800 vph. The movement has a 48 hour power reserve from a single mainspring barrel, under the wheel on the right at 3:00, which is wound by the tungsten micro-rotor, with the automatic winding train under the bridge to the right of the micro-rotor itself. The movement bridge – I suppose if I had to classify it I’d call this a 3/4 plate design – is finished with anthracite electroplating. The whole thing is the result of an interesting engineering challenge, which is to get a reasonable power reserve in a wearably sized movement (bearing in mind that a typical watch movement is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 30mm in diameter, which was the largest movement you could submit in the “wristwatch” category at the observatory time trials) that produces enough torque to drive the display system.

The resulting size is bigger than normal for a wristwatch, but it fits the case very well, albeit that was of less concern to collectors before the advent of display backs, and the overall size of the watch is also partly driven by necessity, as the chapter rings need to be a certain minimum size in order to be legible.

The time despite the unconventional display is quite easy to read and it takes little time if any to get acclimated. Hours and minutes are read off against the red triangle at 6:00; in these images the time is about 12 minutes past 10. I don’t know if it was deliberate, but there is another Easter egg here for students of classical mechanics – as the size of the rings decreases, the rate of rotation increases, in keeping with the conservation of angular momentum (the usual example given is the phenomenon in figure skating where the speed at which a skater spins increases when they pull in their arms.)

Image, Trilobe

This is a visually dramatic and technically interesting watch, although the technical ingenuity is obviously there to support the design and aesthetics. In this respect it’s similar to things like Cartier’s mystery clocks, which could be remarkably clever in their engineering, but in which the mechanics were backstage and deliberately hidden from view, like a magician’s unseen assistant. This is Trilobe’s first watch to open up the mechanism to closer inspection but they’ve done it in such a way as to produce a well integrated combination of aesthetics and mechanics, which just goes to show you that sometimes it can be a real pleasure to see the man behind the curtain.

See it here, and view our collection of pre-owned Trilobe watches.