Moser Launches The Endeavour Minute Repeater Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton ‘Cosmic Rain’

The Endeavour Minute Repeater Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton “Cosmic Rain,” as the rather long name suggests, brings together several different aspects of the company’s minute repeater production from the past, but combined in a new way. The Cosmic Rain repeater gets its name from the defining design element, which is a disk of aventurine glass with a mother-of-pearl inlay which encourages the imagination to visualize different scenarios – glowing lights descending from a starlit sky, or a meteor shower falling past the porthole of a spacecraft voyaging through the cosmos. Moser has combined this display with an openworked version of its Endeavour minute repeater, and with its signature cylindrical balance spring tourbillon.

The “cosmic rain” is shown on a subdial for the hours and minutes, located on the upper right side of the dial, and it’s a bit of a departure for Moser in that the company has used aventurine for dials in several watches (including the Endeavoour Perpetual Moon Aventurine, and others) but always as a full dial, not as a subdial. The restriction of the use of aventurine to a subdial in the Cosmic Rain gives a different effect, both more subtle and in a way, nostalgic, as if it were something not seen in the present, but rather, vividly remembered from a dream.

The term “aventurine glass” is used both at Moser and elsewhere, to specify a kind of decorative glass which was originally developed some time in the 17th century at the famous Murano glassworks in Venice (Murano consists of a group of seven islands in the Venetian lagoon). The glass was supposedly invented when a glassmaker accidentally spilled copper filings into a vat of molten gold – hence the name; all’avventura, which means “by chance” or “by adventure.”

Aventurine glass is often confused with the naturally occurring semiprecious stone of the same name, which is just called “aventurine,” or goldstone. Interestingly enough, the name of the glass, though you wouldn’t think it, was given to the mineral after the glass had been invented, not the other way around – so aventurine glass is actually the original aventurine. Any aventurine glass dial is an exercise in craft; here, there’s the additional challenge, and interest to the collector, of embedding the stylized mother of pearl raindrops into the glass itself (which is layered and fired in a two-step process to produce the fumé gradient characteristic of many Moser watches).

Minute repeaters of any kind are still relatively rare – for several reasons; they’re expensive, but they’re also complex, difficult to manufacture, require hand-tuning and adjustment and, at least so far, they have unlike just about every other complication, resisted industrialization. This is not to say that there are no modern industrial fabrication techniques used to make repeaters, which pretty much universally take advantage of industry standard methods like wire erosion and CNC machining, but getting over the finish line still needs the attention of a watchmaker who understands what gives a repeater the right tone, volume, and cadence, and of course, the application of hand finishing as well.

In this instance, Moser has chosen a material for the case which you might not expect from perhaps the most classic of all complications (certainly one of the oldest, at least if you look at the entire history of chiming timepieces). The case is made from titanium (you can find out more about why titanium is a more challenging material to work with than is generally assumed in our recent story on the relative rarity of the material) which was not used for repeaters until the early 2000s (one of the first examples was the 2005 Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Minute Repeater). Traditionally, the best case material for repeaters was thought to be red gold, which gave the best combination of good volume and rich tone (assuming the casemaker knew their stuff; a really good repeater case is generally thin but made rigid through work-hardening, in order to act as a good resonator). Titanium is strong, but also rigid and light, and so it inherently dampens sound less than any other metal case material.

Finally, a word about the cylindrical balance spring on the tourbillon.

A fan of the history of precision chronometry might argue that this is a more interesting feature than the repeater – certainly, it’s very rare to find one outside of a marine chronometer. The cylindrical balance spring was invented by the English watchmaker John Arnold, who designed it to ensure that the center of gravity of the balance and spring coincided through the entire oscillation of the balance (an ordinary flat balance spring has its center of gravity shift as the spring expands and contracts). Combining it with a tourbillon puts together two solutions designed to minimize the variations in rate in positions caused by gravity. Of course, as with the tourbillon, it’s both a memento of an age when pursuing precision in mechanical horology was not just an intellectual exercise, but a major strategic advantage in both international trade and naval warfare (the development of the marine chronometer in England was partly spurred by a naval disaster, in 1707, which 1400 men and officers lost their lives thanks to errors in navigation).

The movement, by the way, places the hammer and gongs on the dial side of the watch, which means you don’t have to take it off to see the hammers in action (although the centrifugal regulator’s in its usual place on the back). The open dial (or I should say, the absence of any conventional dial) means you can also see the racks, cams, snails, and levers in action when the repeater is activated – normally, those components, which are really the heart of the complication despite the tendency of the gongs and hammers to hog the spotlight, are hidden under the dial but here you get the whole show right up front.

This is (unsurprisingly) a limited edition – just 20 pieces, priced in the US at $440,000.

The Moser Endeavour Minute Repeater Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton “Cosmic Rain”: case, titanium, 40mm x 14.4mm, with sapphire crystals front and back. Repeater slide fitted with Teflon runner for smooth frictionless operation. Dial, open with fumé aventurine subdial and “cosmic rain” mother of pear inlay. Movement, caliber HMC 909, skeletonized, 33mm x 9.6mm, running at 21,600 vph in 35 jewels with 90 hour power reserve; minute repeater chiming the hours, quarters, and minutes on demand, with one minute flying tourbillon. 20 piece limited edition worldwide; price, $440,000.

The 1916 Company is proud to be an authorized retailer for H. Moser & Cie. Please contact us for pricing and availability.