Originally launched as a limited edition featuring cloisonné enamel dials representing the Americas, or Europe, Asia, Africa, the brand soon presented examples with engraved dials featuring the same artwork. Utilizing the same extra-flat caliber 1120, modified for a bi-retrograde time indication, the hands progress divergently across two arc-shaped indicator zones, one graduates from 1 to 12 hours and the other from 0 to 60 minutes. Each hand returns instantaneously to zero on exactly completing half a day, and one hour, respectively. The hands are styled just as two compass legs, reminiscent of the early hand-held compasses such as the ones which Gerard Mercator used throughout his life.

Launched in 1994 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the celebrated Flemish/German cartographer’s passing, Gerard Mercator (1512-1594), Vacheron Constantin’s retrograde Mercator was an incredibly avant-garde timepiece for its time and one of horology’s very first double retrograde indications in a wristwatch. Directly inspired by the double retrograde hands of the Bras en l’Air models of the 30s, the Mercator is one of the few timepieces from the 1990s that best represents Vacheron Constantin's ethos of the time: a mix of high horology and métiers d’art with a dash of audacity

The present Mercator with engraved dial (justly reminiscent of an old parchment) represents the map of Europe/Asia/Africa as drawn by Mercator.