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Kari Voutilainen

Vingt-8 in White Gold with White DIal

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DETAILS

Among today’s independent watchmakers, Kari Voutilainen is considered one of the best in the art of handcraftsmanship. He masters this art to perfection and applies it to parts of the caliber, hands, dial and case. He is also a talented inventor and caliber designer who has launched a series of minute repeaters with a rare decimal function. In 2011, he developed the outstanding in-house base caliber 28 for the watches produced under his brand's name, which can be considered the perfect movement for a collector's watch. It is based on the principles of an observatory chronometer caliber and of course with the design of the famous Peseux 260 observatory caliber in mind. Its concept includes a very large balance wheel, a classic layout and excellent hand finishing of all parts of the caliber, including an incredibly carefully crafted 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. Voutilainen has also abandoned the classic Swiss lever escapement in favor of another invention by Abraham-Louis Breguet, his échappement naturel, albeit in a modernized version. The caliber was given a complex direct impulse escapement, which enables a more even distribution of energy and a greater power reserve. Kari Voutilainen also updated the chronometric quality of the caliber. The large balance wheel with four regulating eccentrics enables fine adjustment of the rate accuracy. The balance is paired with a chronometric hairspring that features a Phillips curve for the outer coil, while the inner coil uses the Grossmann curve.

REASONS TO BUY

The Voutilainen Vingt-8 Unique Piece in white gold impresses with its unique design, the excellent and extremely elaborate hand-finishing of the case, dial and movement as well as 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 with three types of carefully handcrafted guilloché patterns. Made as a unique piece, this watch will remain part of the exclusive circle of the rarest watches by Kari Voutilainen, an independent watchmaker who is one of the most respected among experts and collectors around the world.

What makes this Vingt-8 Unique Piece watch even more attractive is its version of caliber 28, which has been given an extremely rare finish for Vingt-8 watches with the combination of Côtes de Genève, perlage and rose gold plating. The connoisseur of fine watchmaking will certainly notice that Mr. Voutilainen maintains very high polishing standards in the movements he produces, which is reflected in the polished bevels of the bridges and winding wheels, the recesses around the jewels and screws, the screw heads, the bevels of the wheels, the balance wheel and its chaton and – most importantly – the balance bridge, which resembles the tourbillon bridge with its fine conical polish. All this represents an extremely high level of finishing and decoration of the movement, which has the simplest function of indicating the time with three hands.

ABOUT THIS WATCH

The caliber 28 is a true beauty of fine watchmaking, and that is why Mr. Voutilainen has produced a number of series models as well as unique pieces based on this caliber, including this watch. A high degree of freedom in creating new versions of the design is offered by the company’s own dial manufacture, Comblémine, which specializes in the production of dials with handmade guilloché. This traditional technique has long been used in watchmaking, but Mr. Voutilainen tries to find new designs, patterns and techniques by creating original patterns, using daring color combinations or applying additional techniques such as enamel.

In this watch, we find a very classic and almost traditional silver dial decorated with three guilloché patterns: ‘vieux panier’ in the center, ‘grain de riz’ on the chapter ring and a serene version of the ‘flammé’ pattern on the small seconds sub-dial. The outer minute track and the ring scale of the small seconds are traditionally brushed, the applied indices also have a traditional look with applied Roman numerals in the cardinal points and 'sticks' indices in the other directions.

The hallmark of Mr. Voutilainen’s style is of course the high-quality hands, a modernist version of the “Pomme de Breguet” hands, in the elaborated design version, i.e. with a counterweight ring for the small seconds hand. Of course, all 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.

And finally, there's the carefully polished white gold case of Mr. Voutilainen’s Empire-style 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.