Harry Winston Opus 12

Harry Winston Opus 12 More Details – Watch Review


It’s that time of year again, we have had our annual glimpse at the new and latest Harry Winston Opus watch, Each year Harry Winston collaborates with a master horologist to create a limited edition exclusive and innovative timepiece.
This year it’s the turn of Emmanuel Bouchet (pictured below), who developed the Opus 12 in cooperation with the designer, Augustin Nussbaum and at first look it seems quiet normal for a Harry Winston Opus, in terms of having a standard round watch face, but when you look closely you see it is not a standard watch movement it is a technologically advanced series of peripherally aligned hands at each and every 5 minute point, which spin around to indicate the hour and minutes to the nearest 5 minutes.

It also has some really interesting and visually effective features, such as on the hour the watch performs a little dance shall we say, visually it is fun but not practical in any sense of the imagination.

Harry Winston themselves describe it as “At the change of the hour, one witnesses a real spectacle. The inner crown wheel, which has not moved for 60 minutes, suddenly takes off around the dial and its toothed section drives the rotation of the hours hands in rapid succession. As the crown wheel goes around, the hours hand orbits 360° around the minutes hand station after station, and its blue colour appears on the surface in a flash before disappearing again. The kinematics lasts for a few seconds until, after passing by the 12 stations, the toothed section drives the indication of the next hour and stabilizes itself. The speed of rotation is controlled by an escapement, which needs far less energy than a flywheel governor and which provides a captivating sound effect. In fact one of the challenges of this Opus 12 has been to optimize the energy necessary for the precision of the movement and for the animation.”

To allow you to actually tell the time accurately the Opus 12 has two further dials, in the centre of the face one being a seconds indicator and the other a retrograde 5 minute indicator which allows you to actually tell what the minutes are, i.e. if the main minute hand shows 5 minutes and the retrograde shows 2 its 7 minutes past. Don’t forget there are 27 hands on the dial.
Not the easiest watch to tell the time on if you want to be exact but it is a very technologically advanced and complicated piece.

The Watch itself aesthetically looks very nice it has a modern fresh feel to it but not too over modern so as to be un-wearable in my eyes. Many other may feel it is understated in comparison to previous pieces.
As expected the finish and quality craftsmanship of the watch ouses out of every pour.
The Case back is simply a classic looking (I say looking because they have used a technically improved method of creating it). The exhibition case back in sapphire crystal allows you to view the manually wound movement, the only shame is you cant view the more complex movements of the spinning markers. Even with these complicated movements and mechanisms the Harry Winston Opus 12 has a power reserve of 45 hours.
The Opus 12 will be offered as a limited edition (What else?) of 120 pieces in each version, in White Gold and the middle case will be in the Harry Winston Staple of Zalium, There will also be some versions of the Opus 12 with diamonds.
We are expecting the Opus 12 to be priced around the £175,000 mark.
What we can say is we can’t wait to see what they have instore for us for next year, what you get with an Opus is a surprise be it styling or technological advancement, maybe and more likely both.

 

Technical Details

Reference: 500/MMEB46WL.K

Movement: Type Mechanical manually-wound

Specific features 607 parts, 80 jewels and 2 barrels, 24 hands

Power reserve: 45 hours

Decorations Mainplate and upper bridges shot-peened and NAC-coated

Lower bridges shot-peened, adorned with circular Côtes de Genève and nickelpalladium

coated

Functions Hour and 1/12th of an hour (five-minutes) displays via a rotating, double-hand system

Animation of the 12 hour hands at each change of hour. Animation of the minutes hands every five minutes

Retrograde five-minute display, power-reserve indicator and small seconds

Case: Material Polished 18K white gold

Crystal: Anti-reflective sapphire

Back: Exhibition type/Anti-reflective sapphire

Diameter: 46 mm

Water resistance: 30 meters

Dial: Retrograde minute. Power-reserve display with NAC-coated lower part, shot-peened and rhodium upper part

Small seconds with frosted sapphire crystal

Bracelet: Hand-sewn black alligator leather

Buckle: Type Folding buckle, Material Polished 18K white gold