WORLDTEMPUS - 21 March 2011
Elizabeth Doerr
“The Admiral's Cup pillar is now for the very first time a true ‘family' with three distinctive segments appealing to different universes: Extreme – Competition – Heritage,” Antonio Calce, Corum's CEO, explained in a recent interview. “These products perpetuate the ‘DNA' of the collection including the twelve-sided case and the nautical flags.”
Extreme, the first segment Calce spoke of, contains executions of the popular Admiral's Cup products designed for extreme environments. These exhibit powerful and taut lines and feature elements that make them perfect for water sports enthusiasts such as tides indication and a lightning-fast foudroyante seconds display.
A perfect case in point are the Admiral's Cup Seafender 46 Dive and the Seafender Chrono Dive, both of which are slated to debut at Baselworld 2011, which opens on Thursday. The former is a genuine diving instrument that meets the official diving standards and includes a screw-in case back engraved with the self-explanatory inscription “DIVE 300 METERS,” required by the official norms for diver's watches. The twelve convex sides of the 46 mm case crafted in grade 5 titanium are part of what guarantee water resistance to a depth of 300 meters. The 120-toothed unidirectional bezel enables easy visualization of dive times, while the luminescent hands and hour-markers make this watch an authentic instrument that is perfectly legible in adverse situations at sea and underwater.
The timing function on the Seafender Chrono Dive is secured in order to avoid any accidental operation. The two round pushbuttons for start, stop and reset are screw-locked – which means they must be unlocked before making any short-time measurements. Both of these automatic timepieces are certified as chronometers by the C.O.S.C.
“The Competition segment, chiefly comprising chronographs, boasts a more sport-chic design, while the newly launched Heritage segment includes classic, elegant timepieces formed by cases with softer angles and classic complications,” reveals Calce.
Bridging the Past
Possibly the biggest news at Corum is the evolution of the thirty-one-year-old Golden Bridge, which has now officially entered the new millennium by being transformed into an automatic timepiece.
“The Golden Bridge Automatic is unique in the market,” Calce continues. “The challenge consisted in keeping the linear essence of the movement while adding a self-winding mechanism. To keep the design of the baguette movement pure, the unique solution was to invent a linear winding system.”
To accommodate this new and larger caliber, the case size of the Golden Bridge has increased to 51.8 x 37.2 mm. Four years of development and lab testing to verify the choice of materials, frictional forces and the physics of the linear winding mechanism have resulted in a linear oscillating weight crafted in 4 grams of platinum and visible from both sides of the case without disturbing the “baguette” style of the transparent movement. The 194-part caliber is also fitted with a variable-inertia balance and a miniaturized spring barrel that does not disturb the vertical line of the mechanism. The base plate and bridges are crafted in 18-karat gold (the color of which matches that of the case) and embellished with a new handcrafted vertical guilloché motif matching the linear design of the oscillating weight.
Calce sums up by revealing that the Corum Bridges family is now divided in two collections: the Golden Bridge and Ti-Bridge. “Both are unique in the market, belong to Corum's historical legitimacy, and can be easily recognized thanks to their baguette movement and its visibility from all sides of the case,” Calce says.
The Golden Bridge collection is now clearly structured into three different cases: the feminine case launched in 2010 with Miss Golden Bridge, the Golden Bridge case dedicated to the classic models (Golden Bridge, Golden Bridge Tourbillon), and the case dedicated to the automatic models (Golden Bridge Automatic).
