WATCHES & TIMEPIECES 101
THE PERPETUAL CALENDAR
Building a perpetual calendar is no easy feat. For Mr. Roger Dubuis, however, the difficulty was part of the attraction. This was his favourite complication, and as a particularly patient watchmaker, he found great joy in spending time on the mechanism’ s intricate craftsmanship. Roger knew that the perpetual calendar was very hard to master, and that“ definitely scared everyone.” But his unique approach was all about feelings, and getting these feelings into your hands in order to regulate it properly. It’ s the exact sort of passion and dedication that encapsulated his entire lifetime’ s work.
Indeed, the perpetual calendar requires a steady level of perseverance in design. To account for the complexities of the Gregorian calendar, it must be built with a faultless mechanical memory, allowing it to remain accurate for decades into the future. This includes the automatic calculations for months with 28, 30, or 31 days, as well as the adjustment for leap years, which take place every four years. By meeting this necessary and highly elaborate demand, the Excalibur Grande Complication does not require any manual correction until the year 2100 – and then not again for 100 more years.
THE BIRETROGRADE DISPLAY
This perpetual calendar then goes further still, by presenting its information on a Biretrograde display – which allows the calendar’ s hands to move gracefully along the semi-circle scales, before immediately returning to zero at the end of their cycle.
There are many stand-out milestones in the career of Mr. Roger Dubuis, but his development of the Biretrograde display is one of the most memorable. In partnership with Jean-Marc
Wiederrect in the 1980s, he created numerous calibres and registered patents that were truly innovative for their time. One of these was for a co-patented retrograde display system, which the two watchmakers optimized and modernized in their own talented way.
This co-patent later became the basis for the very first Roger Dubuis watch in 1995.
Today, the Biretrograde display seen in the Excalibur Grande Complication includes an individual scale for the day of the week, and another for the day of the month, both equipped with the Excalibur’ s skeletonized hands featuring a semi-instantaneous jump. Accompanying the scales, there is also a month disc between 11 and 12 o’ clock, and a small leap year indication alongside.
THE MINUTE REPEATER
Sometimes, listening is just as beautiful as looking. With the Excalibur Grande Complication, this sentiment is certainly true, courtesy of the Minute Repeater complication that is built into the calibre.
ISSUE 71 2025 THE ART OF LUXURY