Introducing The Latest From De Bethune: The DB Eight

De Bethune has just announced the latest new member of its small family of very high touch, very limited production watches. The new DB Eight is to some degree a follow up to the preceding DB8 but it is also in many respects a completely new watch, and though the design has a clear connection going all the way back to the very first De Bethune watch — the DB1, a two-register, monopusher chronograph with a movement which had originally been developed for Cartier at Techniques Horlogères Appliquées, founded in 1996 by Denis Flageollet, Vianney Halter and F. P. Journe. The DB Eight’s caliber DB3000 is not only the 31st movement from De Bethune — it is also the fourth monopusher chronograph movement produced by De Bethune, having been preceded by the two register caliber in the DB1, the DB8’s single register chronograph with a 45 minute sundial and, of course, the enormously complex Maxichrono.

The DB1 was a quite traditional take on the chronograph as a complication and as a design. The watch was of course recognizably a De Bethune, with its slightly oversized case and ogive (bullet shaped) lugs, but it would not have looked out of place in a showroom of elegant dress chronographs at a jeweler’s in the Art Deco era. With its classic railroad track seconds chapter ring, two subdials (one for the running seconds, and one thirty minute chronograph counter) as well as its Roman numerals and Breguet style hands, DB1 did lay the foundations for what would gradually become the incredibly diverse aesthetic of De Bethune, but with a design language firmly rooted in horological tradition.

DB8, on the other hand, kept much of the very basic design language of the DB1 but changed almost every detail to some extent. The single most noticeable difference between the two was the elimination of the running seconds subdial. In fact, at first glance you could easily mistake the DB8 for a simple, time-only watch, as the remaining chronograph subdial — a 45 second counter this time, which led some enthusiasts to nickname the DB8 the “football timer” after the duration of a period in soccer — was now in the position usually reserved for a running seconds display in a traditionally laid out wrist or pocket watch. The cross-hatched guilloché pattern on the inner dial of the DB1 was replaced with a twelve sector radiating sunburst patter; the Breguet hands became elongated leaf hands, and the Roman numerals became Arabics. The overall effect was still refined, elegant, and clean but in a noticeably more modern idiom, combined with the trompe l’oeil effect of the chronograph subdial at 6:00.

The DB Eight — the full correct reference is DB8RETIS1 — takes things even further in the direction of simplification and clarity. The Arabic numerals are still present but the chronograph seconds track is even further reduced, and placed right at the edge of the dial next to the extremely thin bezel. The twelve sector sunray pattern’s been brought over from the DB8, but the elapsed minute subdial now records sixty minutes, rather than 45, and it has been enlarged so that it now reaches from the center of the dial almost to the very edge, nearly touching the bezel. When reset, the chronograph seconds and minutes hands form a single line, increasing the overall sense of purity, symmetry and simplicity, and the entire watch — in its grade 5 titanium case — is light, comfortable, easy to wear, and at the same time, an exercise in elegant understatement.

The movement, caliber DB3000, is a modern high-beat movement, running at 28,800 vph in 31 jewels and it is hand finished throughout; all steel components are chamfered and hand polished and the hour hand, minute hand, and chronograph seconds and minutes hands are all in De Bethune’s signature heat blued titanium. De Bethune’s technical enhancements, as expected, are present as well, including a balance in titanium grey gold inserts, De Bethune’s patented (2006) flat balance spring with self-centering terminal curve, and an escape wheel in silicon.

The DB Eight is available at launch at $99,000, and is available exclusively through The 1916 Company.