The golden bridge is the brain child of self-taught watchmaker and AHCI co-founder Vincent Calabrese (In 2023 Calabrese and Andersen received the Achievement Award at the GPHG for the creation of AHCI). The idea came to him in the 1970s where he was working in restoration and a client presented him with a Breguet pocket watch whose movement and case had been badly damaged, the client requested only the case to be repaired as “no one saw the movement”.

Calabrese’s horological heart could not accept this and started devising a movement that would be striped to its bare essentials, a baguette movement with a linear gear train that could be miniaturized to fit within a transparent exterior that would fit a wrist elegantly.

After years of trial and error, Calabrese presented his patented, 45-component creation at the 1977 edition of the Geneva International Inventors’ Show for which he won a prize. René Bannwart, founder of Corum saw the potential of the baguette movement and immediately acquired the patent. Corum then collaborated with Calabrese to develop the movement further and after three years, it was unveiled as the Golden Bridge at the 1980 Basel Fair, and became not only one of the most talked about watches of the time but Corum’s flagship line.

The present example is not only a fine example of the technical prowess of the movement, that is delightfully hand engraved, but is framed in a lavish white gold diamond set case with matching bracelet highlighting the importance of the movement.