2019: Girard-Perregaux, aesthete of the invisible, explores the Cosmos, the essence of time. The Swiss watch Manufacture is introducing a new universe, innovative materials and unexpected complications within its fundamental collections united under a single theme: “Earth to Sky”. Just one year ago, Girard-Perregaux introduced the Neo-Tourbillon with Three Bridges Skeleton. Today, at Miami Watches & Wonders, Girard-Perregaux is unveiling Quasar, a timepiece revealing a new dimension of this iconic movement.
 

Based on the “Earth to Sky” theme, this complication model is named after the most brilliant of astronomical entities, the quasar. Thus illuminated, this tourbillon with its contemporary spirit enters the light spectrum with a case entirely made of transparent sapphire crystal. Through these crystalline walls, Calibre GP9400-1035 reveals its openworked construction much like a star viewed with a telescope. This Haute Horlogerie movement draws the eye like a black hole and explodes with light, illuminating the gap between its components. Devoid of any opacity, Quasar allows photons to play freely across its matt surfaces and taut curves.

The first is the 1884 patent for three gold bridges that is visible on the dial side, a unique signature of the Maison. The second is the skeleton work hand-finished in the workshops of La Chaux-de-Fonds. The third is the 2015 birth of the Neo-Tourbillon with Three Bridges - neither straight nor made of gold, but arched, skeletonized and black. The fourth is the use of sapphire crystal serving a function that is more technical than merely visual. When the Laureato with Three Sapphire Bridges was presented in 2007, crystal corundum found its place in the very structure of a Fine Watchmaking calibre. These four vectors converge to create the new Girard-Perregaux Quasar.

The 45 mm diameter Quasar case is entirely made of sapphire crystal. A chimney-style glass covers the movement bridges like a telluric dome. Its all-of-a-piece caseband features curving sides and angular lugs. At nearly 3,000 degrees Kelvin, fundamental particles merge under the effect of an incandescent flow of oxygen and dihydrogen. It is from this process that sapphire crystal emerges. It is then cut, machined, drilled, domed and polished using tools made from the hardest material in the universe: diamond.