IF ONLY WALLS COULD SPEAK - Blancpain

IN TIME
LE TOURBILLON TRANSPARENCE
Lingering, lurking, lying in wait in the back
of every savvy watch collector’s consciousness
is a rarely asked, almost never answered
question: “Yes. I can see the finishing
through the clear case back of my watch.
The bridges with delicately applied côte de
Genève. The plates with perlage swirls. The
gleaming anglage polish on the sides of
plates and bridges. But … what about the
finish on the side of the movement hidden
behind the dial?” Occasionally, the question
turns somewhat dark, maybe even with an
edge of menace. “What if … there is deception
here? What if … the watchmakers who
produced my watch dolled up the side of the
watch I could see, the parts exposed to view
by the clear case back, but followed some
lesser standard elsewhere?”
Of course watchmakers, from whom
nothing is hidden, know that for every
Blancpain watch, the quality of finishing on
the components which do not reveal themselves
through a clear case back is the same
as those which do. Wonderful articles have
been written and published on the Internet
by exceptionally talented watch collectors
who have themselves dismantled their
Blancpains and examined the finishing of all
the parts, even the most hidden from view,
such, as for example, the components of the
keyless works. (For the less experienced collectors,
the keyless works of a mechanical
watch, deeply buried in the movement, is
attached to the crown. These components
allow the crown to wind the watch in one
position and change the time when the
crown is pulled to a different position.) One
particularly experienced collector concluded
in his Internet article that the finishing of the
WITH THE SPECIAL EDITION TOURBILLON TRANSPARENCE,
BLANCPAIN PARTS THE MISTS AND MYSTERIES OF
FINISHING ON MANY OF THE PARTS WHICH OTHERWISE
WOULD BE HIDDEN FROM VIEW.
Blancpain was impeccable throughout,
including the keyless works (and sadly came
to a very different conclusion concerning
another brand where the visible parts displayed
elaborate finishing flourishes, but the
hidden parts, particularly the keyless works,
were a disappointment). That conclusion is
also born out in the hands of many
knowledgeable collectors who with an
accomplished sensitive touch can feel the
finishing of a Blancpain when they wind the
watch, pull the crown, activate a pusher on
a chronograph, change time of a GMT
function or otherwise manipulate a control
on the watch.