Jacob & Co. Brings Back the Palatial Flying Tourbillon Minute Repeater With a Red Dial

If for nothing else, Jacob & Co. will be remembered for making quite extravagant watches. From the first watch that put them on the global map, the Five Time Zone, all the way to the completely bonkers Astronomia creations, it's clear that Jacob has no patience for conventional watches. Look at, for example, the Opera Godfather to the Twin Turbo Furious, their minute repeating watches. You can't find anything like that anywhere else. And like it or hate it, you can't deny they're original. But it wasn't always like that. In 2014, they released the Palatial, their first repeater and what has to be their most conventional chiming watch: a round case, no triple-axis anything, no hidden automaton. Now, for Jacob & Co.’s 40th anniversary, they're bringing it back with a limited edition of 12 pieces.

The case is made out of 18k rose gold, 43mm wide and 12.3mm thick, fully polished, with the sculpted lugs of the original carried over. There’s sapphire front and back, and water resistance of 30 meters, which is about what you’d expect. Maybe even more. But most surprising is that thickness. Just 12.3mm for a tourbillon repeater? That's wild!

The dial is made out of transparent red mineral glass, so the repeater works sit in plain view, letting you watch the racks, cams and hammers do their job, without having to cut out a piece of the dial. You get faceted rose gold indices, a gold colored Jacob & Co. logo at 12, a brushed gold treble clef at 9 and skeletonized hands are shaped like metronomes. At 6 o'clock is a huge opening for the turbillon.

The hand-wound calibre JCCM04 is built in partnership with Geneva’s Régence group, and it has a long paper trail: developed at BNB Concept, picked up by Pierre Favre’s MHC, which later folded into Timeless under Régence. It has 308 parts and 29 jewels, a one-minute flying tourbillon beating at 3Hz, and a 90-hour power reserve. It now also has a silent-running centrifugal governor, which regulates the strike without the background whir that some repeaters have. The hammers and the cathedral gongs, which wrap the full circumference of the calibre for a longer, fuller tone, have been reworked as well. Through the caseback, the bridges are grey-toned with Côtes de Genève. The strap is red alligator with a rose gold buckle.

The Jacob & Co. Palatial Flying Tourbillon Minute Repeater (ref. PT500.40.NS.AC.ABALA) is limited to 12 pieces and priced at $390,000. See more on the Jacob & Co. website.