Haute Horlogerie has no room for compromise – and that’s why Roger Dubuis has never been one to play by the rules. It asserts its uniqueness by combining the mysterious secrets of the noblest traditions with visionary flashes of genius through which it has achieved an uncontested position as the master of expressive and contemporary watchmaking.
The brand’s most recent creation is a stunning juxtaposition of the brilliance of these past artisans and the most inventive modern techniques. Enter the Excalibur Diabolus in Machina, a creation guaranteed to astound even the boldest souls and partisans of the idea that life must be lived intensely, passionately and – let’s say it like it is – excessively!
A UNIQUE TIMEPIECE
Everyone knows that the devil is in the details. And because creative irreverence is a temptation that Roger Dubuis finds irresistible, Excalibur Diabolus in Machina pushes sophistication to breaking point, offering the exclusive members of the Roger Dubuis tribe an experience that is as exceptional as it is passionate.
This new challenge combines technical prowess with aesthetic daring, those ultimate freedoms that only a specific production model can allow against the background of a state-of-the-art Manufacture providing as much the strength as the independence to develop a distinctive vision of Time that flies in the face of all existing conventions.
In a sassy move within which manufacturing perfection bearing the Poinçon de Genève meets disruptive design, every effort has been made to ensure that Excalibur Diabolus in Machina is up there with the most extraordinary Haute Horlogerie experiences. Roger Dubuis thus has fun violating its own codes by allowing its famous star to literally implode, resulting in an incredible design that brings harmony to opposites while aligning geometric rigour with chaos. Not one element of this de-structured neo-star is positioned on the same level, creating an even more complex but far more exciting watchmaking feat!
A NEW TAKE ON THE CALIBRE
The story of Roger Dubuis cannot be told without mentioning the very finest horological complications, especially the highly sought-after minute repeater. The maestro himself, an exceptional watchmaker, designed the plans right at the start when the Manufacture was created. Today, this legacy has become a veritable treasure and by integrating two watchmaking complications, Roger Dubuis once again demonstrates its devilish expertise and passion for impossible challenges.
The difference lies in Roger Dubuis’ application of a mischievous futuristic approach to the minute repeater concept. Invented at a time when turning on a night light involved much more than flicking a switch, this horological complication is one of the most challenging to achieve. The wearer can check the time using a pushpiece that activates a ring tone with a low pitch for the hours, a high pitch for the minutes, and two tones for the quarter hours. At Roger Dubuis, the watchmaker have not stopped there, preferring to add functions designed to make using the timepiece more fun. First, perched high at 11 o’clock is a disc that has been skilfully blended with a Roman numeral. Marked with the words Hours, Quarters and Minutes, the disc starts to turn as soon as the minute repeater is activated, visually illustrating the time intervals being chimed. To achieve this, the watchmakers have enriched this second visual indication with the minute repeater’s main feeler-spindle system, which requires mechanically seeking information on the time before striking
Further proof of the obsessive, excessive nature of Roger Dubuis watchmakers, a second functional indicator – in the form of a lever placed between 3 o’clock and 4 o’clock – instantly lets the wearer know whether the watch is in “manual winding” or “time setting” position. This visual safety feature is extremely important as adjusting the watch while the minute repeater is playing can damage the movement.
Finally, one other function has been developed to make life easier for the user. This is the minute repeater’s pushpiece, which has been embellished with a mechanism called “all or nothing”. Only allowing the minute repeater to be triggered if the pusher has been fully and completely pressed, this second safety feature prevents the mechanism from being triggered or providing merely a partial indication of time.
Roger Dubuis combines this major complication with its famous flying tourbillon, that has been an integral part of the brand’s identity right from the start, and which requires peerless skill and experience to assemble and fit. Designed to compensate for gravitational effects on the accuracy of a watch movement and the hands it drives, the tourbillon is a mechanical device enabling a watch to communicate with the great “master clock” of the universe.
DIABOLUS IN MACHINA
Roger Dubuis has chosen to tune its minute repeater to the sound of the tritone, the famous “Diabolus in Musica” chord outlawed in medieval religious music, and found, for example, in Camille Saint-Saëns’s symphonic poem, Danse Macabre. This primordial dissonance is also the secret key to all clever and complex melodic harmony, music being the art that has chosen Time as a backdrop against which to weave its spells and govern the laws of beauty. Tuned here to C and G flat, its tones are enhanced by the nobility of the materials through which they resound, offering listeners an enchantingly sensory experience.
A masterpiece representing the paradoxes of Time, a hedonistic invitation to “Carpe Diem”, and a poetic reminder of our fleeting condition, Excalibur Diabolus in Machina is much more than just a watch. It is a manifesto for an exclusive tribe of pioneering minds on an incessant quest to constantly reinvent their own game.