Kari Voutilainen

Vingt-8 in White Gold with "Havana" Dial with White Gold Movement from the first 50 ever made
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DETAILS

Among today’s leading independent watchmakers, Kari Voutilainen is considered one of the best in the art of handcrafting. He has mastered this art to perfection, applying it to parts of the caliber, hands, dial and case. He is also a talented inventor and caliber designer who has produced a series of minute repeaters with a rare decimal function. In 2011, after the discontinuation of the Observatoire editions, he developed the outstanding in-house base caliber 28 for the then new Vingt-8 collection based on this caliber. The design of the caliber 28 is based on the principles of an observatoire chronometer caliber, both technically and visually, and of course with the design of the famous Peseux 260 observatory caliber in mind. The concept of the caliber 28 includes a very large balance wheel, a classic layout and excellent hand finishing of all parts of the caliber, including an incredibly carefully crafted long balance bridge that allows an unobstructed view of the escapement and balance wheel. Kari Voutilainen approaches the finishing of the balance bridge with the same meticulousness with which highly experienced watchmakers finish the bridge of a first-class tourbillon. For the caliber 28, Voutilainen has abandoned the classic Swiss lever escapement in favor of another invention by Abraham-Louis Breguet, his échappement naturel, albeit in a branded modernized version. This escapement uses a direct impulse system that allows for a more even distribution of energy and a longer power reserve – up to 50 hours. Kari Voutilainen has also updated the chronometric quality of the caliber by using a large balance wheel with four regulating eccentrics, allowing fine adjustment of the rate accuracy, and combining the balance wheel with a chronometric hairspring whose outer coil has a Phillips curve, while the inner coil is shaped according to the Grossmann curve.

REASONS TO BUY

This Voutilainen Vingt-8 in white gold with “Havana” dial captivates with its classic, sober and elegant design, typical of the early Vingt-8 models, the excellent and extremely elaborate hand-finishing of the case, dial and movement, and the impressive traditional design of the hand-wound caliber with a very large and maximally open balance wheel. This watch is full of charisma, as it has a serene design with a silver dial in a rare “Havana” brown tone with three types of carefully handcrafted guilloché patterns and a caliber with the extremely elaborate finishing typical of Voutilainen watches. The final touch – the astonishingly rare monochrome version of the Observatoire-style hands without the use of blued steel – makes the watch even more attractive.

ABOUT THIS WATCH

Kari Voutilainen felt very free to create a variety of designs with handcrafted guilloché dials for the Vingt-8 collection based on his caliber 28, especially after acquiring dial specialist Dialtech (now Comblémine) in 2014. The traditional guilloché technique has long been used in watchmaking, but Mr. Voutilainen tries to find new designs, patterns and techniques by creating original patterns, using bold color combinations or applying additional techniques such as enameling. 

The special feature of this Vingt-8 is that it is equipped with an early Observatoire-style dial, which Voutilainen adapted for the Vingt-8 watches in the pre-series prototypes. The dial of this watch from the early series of the first fifty examples featured hands in the Observatoire style, applied Roman numerals from VIII to IV in a serif design and mostly a decoration with three guilloché patterns: “Vieux panier” in the center, “Clous de Paris” on the chapter ring and a checkerboard pattern on the small seconds sub-dial. The outer minute track and the ring scale of the small seconds sub-dial are traditionally brushed. The hallmark of Mr. Voutilainen’s style is, of course, the high-quality hands in the Observatoire style, a modernist version of the “Pomme de Breguet” hands, in the elaborate version, i.e. with a counterweight ring for the small seconds hand. Normally, the hands are a combination of white gold and blued steel, a design that Mr. Voutilainen adopted at the beginning of his career as an independent watchmaker. This watch, however, has a monochrome version of the Observatoire hands without use of the blued steel – an extremely rare feature, as only a handful of Vingt-8 watches have appeared with such hands. Obviously, this choice was made to enhance the contrast of the hands against the dark brown “Havana” dial of this watch. Finally, there is the carefully polished white gold case of Mr. Voutilainen’s Empire version with the teardrop-shaped lugs, which he describes as “self-polishing” – and we can’t help but trust his experience as a watch restorer. 

The bridges and the mainplate are decorated with the traditional combination of Côtes de Genève and perlage. The connoisseur of fine watchmaking will certainly appreciate that Mr. Voutilainen maintains very high polishing standards in the movements he produces, which is reflected in the bevels of the bridges, including the properly finished inner and outer sharp corners, the solarized and grained ratchet wheel with beveled teeth, the recesses around the jewels and screws, the screw heads, the chamfers of the wheels, the balance wheel and its chaton and, – most importantly, – the balance bridge with fine conical polish, finished to the same standards as the tourbillon bridge. All this represents an extremely high level of finishing and decoration of the movement, which has the basic function of indicating the time with three hands. 



Vingt-8 in White Gold with "Havana" Dial with White Gold Movement from the first 50 ever made

Specifications

RefVingt 8
D=39mm
GlassSapfire glass
DialBrown
Case materialPolished white gold

Condition report

Box:Yes
Papers:Yes

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS: