Rarely has a watchmaker singlehandedly so well represented a horological genre that has gone from being reserved for the cognoscenti, to a category that is boxing in the same heavyweight league as Philippe Dufour has.
Philippe Dufour exemplifies what we have collectively come to imagine as the typical Swiss watchmaker: a pipe smoking solitary figure working in a small workshop in the Swiss mountains making watches by hand of incomparable beauty and quality infused with passion and love.
Philippe Dufour is all of the above and much more. An extremely talented and passionate watchmaker, he is an ardent defender of traditional watchmaking that he considers a dying art. A true living legend, his watches are considered masterpieces that collectors jealously treasure, making them extremely difficult to obtain.
An independent watchmaker since the late 1970s, Dufour restored antique and vintage timepieces which led him ten years later to develop a very small series of pocket and wrist grand sonnerie watches, followed by the Duality, the world’s first wristwatch incorporating a double escapement.
After having proven his undeniable talent and expertise in creating ultra-complicated mechanisms, he set out in 2000 on the challenging task of creating a simple three hand watch, aptly named Simplicity, with a movement architecture designed specially by the Master himself, to demonstrate hand finish and decoration that modern horology had not yet witnessed.
The world’s greatest collectors recognized a modern masterpiece and icon, and orders flooded in and rapidly. Dufour’s quota of about 200 movements was rapidly reached, and those lucky enough to have been able to order a Simplicity had to wait long years before delivery. Everybody else had to wait for a piece to appear on the secondary market.
You can therefore understand out utter excitement when Dufour told us he would be closing the Simplicity adventure, in celebration of the model’s 20th anniversary, with a limited edition (a first for Dufour) of 20 pieces of which we have the honor of offering number 00/20.
Dufour will be making the Anniversary Simplicity in 7 pieces in pink gold, 7 pieces in white gold and 7 pieces in platinum of which he will be keeping a piece for himself.
The present Anniversary model is slightly different from the other Simplicity models, keeping with the original elegant 37mm diameter, the case has been slightly modified to welcome a hinged back, the crown now has his initials PD engraved on it, initials that can be found at 12 o’clock, applied on the beautifully guilloché grey dial with Breguet numerals.
However, as with all of Dufour's timepieces, the movement is the star. The gentle flow of the bridges’ curves, the bold and alluring inward and outward angles and the hand applied Geneva waves and red rubies provide a seductive visual harmony. Needless to say that the decoration and assembly are done by hand.
The present Simplicity is a watch of collectors’ dreams and an opportunity to obtain one of the rarest, most important, and most sought after timepieces created by a living legend.