Hands-On With (Amazing) Pieces From The Breguet 250th Anniversary Collection
The Classique 7255, the Expèrimentale I, and guest appearances from the Queen of Naples.
Breguet’s 250th anniversary year was 2025 – the brand was established in Paris by Abraham Louis Breguet in 1775 and thanks to the sedate pace of Parisian urban planning (at least since Haussmann’s somewhat overzealous renovations in the mid-19th century) you can still see the building where Breguet hung out his shingle, at 39 Quai d’Horloge on the Île de la Cité. The number of experiments and innovations Breguet pioneered would fill many books, and in fact, many such books exist, but the somewhat daunting task facing Montres Breguet today, is maintaining a commercial presence while at the same time, continuing to demonstrate the same capacity for invention which gave us things like the tourbillon, the resonance watch, the Sympathique clocks, and a whole plethora of experimental escapements.
The 250th Anniversary watches from Breguet were exceptional and exceptionally well received , but the stars ot the show from a technical standpoint had to be the Expèrimentale 1, which is a very high beat tourbillon with a unique magnetic escapement, running at 72,000 vph/10Hz, and the Classique 7225, which has Breguet’s patented magnetic pivots for the balance staff, and which also runs at 72,000 vph/10Hz. Both watches are in the “Scientific” category of Breguet watches, which is an astonishing ±1 second maximum deviation in rate per day. This was also the year that Breguet announced that moving forward their watches would be classified in three groups: Evening (-2/+6 seconds, which is already better than the COSC chronometer spec); Civilian (± 2 seconds per day); and Scientific (±1 second per day).
In person the Expèrimentale 1 is an imposing watch, with a heavy gold case whose visual, if not physical, weight is relieved by the three delicate circles forming the chapter rings for the hours, minutes, and seconds. The tourbillon and its magnetic escapement are under the chapter ring for the seconds at 12:00 and because the escapement operates so quickly it is difficult to see the precision of its operation. A model provided by Breguet during our presentation helped clarify the actual structure and operation of the escapement.
Our Introducing story on the Expèrimentale 1 goes into quite a lot of detail on the escapement, but as you can see from the model the basic principles of operation are more or less the same as for the lever escapement. There is a lever very similar to a standard lever escapement, and an escape wheel, but the locking and impulse energy necessary for the operation of the escapement comes from the interaction of very small magnetic pallets on the pallet, and ramp-shaped magnets on the escape wheel. The escape wheel is actually a stack of three wheels – the top and bottom carry the magnetic ramps, and the center bronze-colored escape wheel’s there to provide a physical locking point. In normal operation, the magnetic field strength is enough to prevent the lever pallets from making contact with the stop wheel but contact – albeit very slight contact – may occur when the watch is worn.
The platform for the tourbillon, which carries the driving wheel, escape wheel, lever, and balance, can be seen above inside the chapter ring for the seconds. It’s a fascinating watch to have in hand and you are very much aware that you’re holding something that’s never been done before in watchmaking (if you check out our Introducing post, you’ll be able to read about some of the few earlier attempts to adapt magnetism to watch and clockmaking).
The view through the caseback very much calls up Breguet’s design language during his lifetime, in movement design – generally speaking, Breguet’s movements are generally brass gilded with gold, and none other than Dr. George Daniels, whose work was influenced by Breguet in several respects, spoke eloquently about the sober beauty of a gilt movement plate contrasting with perfectly polished steel parts, which is what you see here. While the watch is obviously very modern technically, it also feels very much connected with the general aesthetics of Breguet’s watches in terms of movements, at least. And, even if the dial side is a bit of a departure from Breguet dial-side business as usual, it still fits well into the overall collection, where after all we have, among other things, the open dials and exposed mechanisms of the Tradition watches.
The watch above is the Classique 7255, and the design of the dial is based on one of the most famous of all Breguet watches made during his lifetime: Breguet no. 1176, a “garde-temps” watch made for Count Stanislaus Pot0cki in 1809. The Count was not only a military officer and political leader; he was also fascinated by the sciences as well and the watch, which is a four minute tourbillon designed to be the last word in precision, was a fitting watch for him.
The Classique 7255 runs its escapement at the same high speed as the Expèrimentale 1, but while that watch has a magnetic escapement, No. 7255 uses magnetic pivots on the balance staff. (Much more technical details are in our Introducing story.) The pivots don’t make physical contact with the magnets above and below them, so there’s no friction (except for air resistance) and there is also no variation in rate between the horizontal and vertical positions. This variation in rate was one of the problems Breguet was attempting to solve when he invented the tourbillon. I’m not sure if flat and hanging position rates are exactly identical in 7225 – there may be some very minor differences having to do with changes in position of the inner and outer terminal curves of the balance spring but if there are any, they are negligible.
The Classique 7225 looks like a minute repeater thanks to the pusher on the left side of the case, but that’s actually a pusher for the stop seconds – the 7225’s right hand small seconds hand will flyback and begin running immediately when you press the pusher.
There is extremely intricate engraving on the movement, and while you might expect an engraving showing the Île de la Cité from above, which is a motif Breguet’s used before, what we actually have is a bird’s eye view of Breguet’s manufacture today, which is located in the Vallée de Joux, in the town of Chenit. Look carefully at the engraving and let your eye travel upwards, and you’ll see a representation of the Lac de Joux, and the mountain known as the Dent de Vaulion at the other end of the lake.
So we’ve got kind of opposite strategies with the Expèrimentale 1 and the Classique 7225 – the first is modern in design on the dial side but almost reactionary in its adherence to Breguet’s movement finishing on the back; and the second is a direct callback to a Breguet masterpiece from the early 19th century on the front, but evokes Breguet’s modern identity on the back. I don’t really have a preference either way although I’ve loved Count Potocki’s watch for many years so the Classique might be a sentimental favorite for me, but they are both powerful and impressive watches to experience in person, both technically and aesthetically (the Classique, by the way, is built along the same lines as the Expèrimentale 1; it’s 41mm x 10.7mm).
Also at the presentation, we had something which shows that modern Breguet is perfectly capable of taking its spirit of invention and using it to create some of the most lavishly beautiful high jewelry watches ever made.
This is the Breguet Reine de Naples Crazy Flower, and no prizes for guessing how it got its name. The baguettes ringing the egg shaped center of the watch are all mobile set– they can swing up and down as you move your arm, making what’s already a very animated watch even more impossible to look away from. The egg shaped case, of course, is based on a complicated watch Breguet made for one of his repeat clients, Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples and the younger sister of Napoleon Bonaparte. I happen to think that the Breguet Reine de Naples watches are in general some of the most beautifully elegant classic ladies’ watches anyone’s ever designed, and the Crazy Flower renders me as close to being speechless about a watch as I have ever been. It would have knocked Caroline Murat right off her throne in amazement.
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