The Big, Bold, Brash Quenttin 31 Day Tourbillon, From Jacob & Co.

The first watch from Jacob & Co. that I ever saw in person was this one: a 47mm x 56mm x 21.5mm monster of a watch called the Quenttin Tourbillon. The watch had just been announced, and I saw it at the Jacob & Co. boutique on 57th Street, where the meeting began with Jacob showing me the watch, and ended with me holding in the palm of my hand, a 20 karat pink diamond (Jacob found out during the course of the interview that I was curious about gemstones and asked me if I wanted to “see something interesting.”) That was in 2006, and it’s now almost twenty years since I saw the watch for the first time, and for all that I can’t separate my reactions now from my reactions then very easily, I still think the Quenttin Tourbillon has the power to amaze if you see it in person.

It is a hundred per cent for sure that you are not going to see anything like it; the closest thing I can think of to the Quenttin Tourbillon is the Hublot La Ferrari, which came along some years later, in 2014; and there is a reason for the resemblance – the Quenttin Tourbillon’s constructors were Matthias Buttet, Enrico Barbasini, and Michel Navas, who at the time were the founders of and partners in BNB Concept, a high end complications specialist. BNB produced some astonishing watches, but filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and the company’s CNC machines, supply of spare parts, and 29 of its employees, became part of Hublot; Matthias Buttet would go on to create the Hublot La Ferrari; with the movement subsequently being deployed in a 40 hour version: the MP-07.  (Barbasini and Navas would of course, go on to found La Fabrique du Temps).

The La Ferrari currently holds the record for the longest power reserve of any wristwatch, at 50 days, but at the time of its launch, the Quenttin set a new world’s record of 31 days – a full month’s running time, out of seven mainspring barrels, stacked horizontally across the upper half of the case. (The Lange 31, which also has a 31 day power reserve, was launched in 2007). The Quenttin Tourbillon’s tourbillon is mounted on the side of the case and is oriented vertically with respect to the rest of the case and movement. The system for winding the watch is a lot of fun to play with. Instead of a conventional crown, you get a flip up semicircular lever that’s easy to grasp and turn; you set the time with an identical lever on the left side of the case, and that’s it. It’s a simple, easy to use system which Jacob has gone on to use on many other watches, including the Astronomia tourbillons.

At a distance of twenty years, and with so much water under the bridge for watchmaking at Jacob & Co. (which has gone on to produce many spectacular complicated watches, including the Astronomia Tourbillons, the Opera Godfather, and the Twin Turbo Furious, what an unexpected surprise the Quenttin was when it debuted. The man behind it was, after all, not known for high end complicated watchmaking to put it mildly; he had risen to fame through the creation of big, bold jewelry pieces which were enthusiastically embraced by the hip-hop community in the 1980s and 1990s. But this was the guy who had been dubbed, “Jacob the Jeweler” by The Notorious BIG, not Jacob the watchmaker; this is the guy whose most famous watch heretofore had been the extroverted but hardly refined Five Time Zones,  and the idea of this individual not only making a highly complicated mechanical timepiece, in Switzerland, which set a world’s record in mechanical horology, no less, was a little hard for some folks in the tradition obsessed, risk-averse, inherently somewhat conservative world of haute horlogerie to swallow.

Nonetheless, there it was and here it is. It is immediately obvious that this watch, and for that matter, Jacob’s subsequent efforts in mechanical horology, that he’s not even slightly interested in the backwards-looking, tradition-obsessed watch designs which have taken over fine watchmaking since the global financial crisis of the mid-2000s, and the subsequent boom in interest in vintage watches, and the boom after that for smaller, classically styled, and especially, traditionally finished watches which has brought us, in the present day, into a period when a hand-finished time only watch  from a highly regarded independent watchmaker is a six figure proposition. Complaining that the Quentinn is too big and bold for its own good is a little like complaining that Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music lacks the nuance and structural complexity of The Goldberg Variations; the Quentinn was designed for someone who is not interested in leading a life of quiet introspection, at least not when it comes to horology.

Now all that said, it’s not as if this watch sets out to be willfully uncomfortable to wear. The case is titanium, so although the size of the watch may be daunting, the mass won’t be, and the Quentinn has articulated lugs that curve sharply downwards and make for a snug fit, even on the 16 centimeter wrist of Mr. Tim Mosso. The case itself is also curved and between the case geometry, articulated lugs, and the thick strap, which helps distribute the mass of the watch more evenly around the wrist, you have a pretty comfortable wearing experience ahead of you if you decide to take the Quenttin out for a spin.

The name of the Quenttin Tourbillon, by the way, is sometimes said to have come from the admiration Jacob has for the director, Quentin Tarantino, although this doesn’t seem actually  be the case. Business Insider, in a 2016 interview with Jacob, wrote: “As the story goes, a client walked in to the store and asked Arabo about the unusual design. ‘If you give me the deposit, I will name it after you,’ Arabo offered the client. He agreed to foot the bill, and the Quenttin got its name. Later, the popular film director Quentin Tarantino picked up a Quenttin of his own, and wore it on the cover of L’Uomo Vogue in 2008.

The Quenttin is a watch that is both a manifestation of its time, and something which stands a little apart from the hyperwatches and mega-complications which were making horological headlines in the aughts. I don’t think it came about particularly because Jacob Arabo wanted to be part of any sort of trend in designing headline grabbing hyperwatches. He wanted to make a mechanical watch that would establish him not just as a jeweler, but as a serious watchmaker, without abandoning the visual hyperbole that makes Jacob & Co. what it is, and I think there’s an excellent chance that if in 2006, the most talked-about watches were all time only extra flat dress watches, he’d still have come up with the Quenttin (although he might have had a hard time finding a constructor to make it if BNB Concept hadn’t been around). If you are in a pejorative mood you might call it gauche or excessive, but it is in its own way, an extremely honest watch. It is not trying to be anything it’s not; it dances to no tune but its own, and unlike much of the somewhat timid, derivative watch design we have today, it has the strength of its own convictions.

The Jacob & Co Quenttin Tourbillon: case, titanium, 47mm x 56mm x 21.5mm, with carbon fiber panels and curved sapphire crystals front and back;articulated lugs; water resistance, 30 meters. Movement, BNB Concept for Jacob & Co. vertical tourbillon with seven mainspring barrels, hours and minutes shown on horizontal rollers, with 31 day power reserve. Hand wound via flip up lever on the right side case flank; time setting via an identical lever on the left side case flank. See it here.