Michel Parmigiani is certainly one of the most talented watchmakers of his generation. He hesitated at length between pursuing a degree in architecture or watchmaking and finally decided on the latter but all his work has been inspired by the former.

At just the age of 26 he opened his own restoration workshops in 1976 and soon after began creating unique timepieces for his discerning clientele.

Some of the greatest independent watchmakers of today cut their teeth on restoration, working for Parmigiani including Kari Voutilainen, Denis Flageollet, Stepan Sarpaneva, and Raúl Pagès. Parmigiani’s workshops were known to restore the most important pieces ever made and even restoring watches and clocks that were deemed impossible to restore, including one of Breguet's original Sympathie clocks.

Michel Parmigiani launched his eponymous brand in 1996 focusing mainly on table clocks and pocket watches and launching his first wristwatch model in 1998: The Toric. The models featured single or double stepped knurled bezels, javelin hands and often intricately guilloché dials.

The Toric perpetual calendar was first launched in 1999 and featured an extremely legible dial with the day and month indications read via apertures, the date indicated by a retrograde hand (a true novelty for the epoch), the leap year indicator at the top part of the dial and moonphase indication is placed at 6 o’clock.

A timepiece of utmost elegance and technical ingenuity the present Toric perpetual calendar is a potent mix of Michel Parmigiani’s technical dexterity and design prowess.