As its name suggests, the Antarctique Révélation has been skillfully skeletonized and the new bespoke, purpose-built movement exposes its pulsating heart on the dial side, to the thrill of the wearer.
The high art of skeletonisation allows connoisseur and neophyte alike to discover and delight in the inner workings of a watch, the interplay of the hollowed-out bridges, wheels, and hands around a filigree mainplate.
Czapek & Cie’s Antarctique Révélation takes this idea even further. The movement itself is placed on the dial side, where it acts as a fascinating animation to thrill the wearer. It recalls the Antarctique Rattrapante launched in 2021, which featured the first split-seconds chronograph to appear on the dial. Inspiration came once more from the fans of the brand, says CEO Xavier de Roquemaurel: “People were in love with the remarkable design of our SXH5 movement, and we therefore asked ourselves how we could somehow make it visible on the dial.”
What sounded simple at first became a three-year saga of deep exploration into aesthetics and engineering. The powerful SXH5 was an outstanding caliber on its own merit and with an exceptionally stark design, in particular the fine bridges angling over to grip the gearwheels, a hint of the nineteenth-century Czapek pocket watch movements.
“One of the first requests had been to engrave a drawing of the movement onto the dial, as a ‘trompe l’oeil,’” says de Roquemaurel. “But soon a far more complex idea emerged, namely turning part of the movement upside down in the case and skeletonizing the main plate.”
The decision raised a number of significant challenges, the first one being to completely reverse the escapement. Then the oscillating mass had to be engraved on both sides, for example, and the crown mechanism, now visible to the naked eye, had to be reworked entirely. On a more technical note, the seconds hand could no longer be connected by a bridge to the center, so space was made at 4:30 for a small seconds dial. The solution was to use sapphire crystal ring for the seconds. It is discreetly attached to the larger sapphire ring carrying the hours and minutes and ensuring as much transparency as possible, so the wearer can take a deep dive into the mechanism.
Gradually, what emerged was a new movement, the SXH7. As it evolved, elements from other Czapek models found their place, like the central tripod from the Antarctique Rattrapante holding together the finely cut out bridges. The position of the small seconds, too, is reminiscent of the famous day-date subdial of the Quai des Bergues.
