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What We Know
Fresh news out of Geneva – Zenith and Kari Voutilainen, with some help from their pals at Phillips, are releasing a very cool special edition watch. Limited to only 10 pieces, the new wristwatch contains restored examples of Zenith's caliber 135-O, an observatory-grade chronometer movement from the 1950s that has long been a favorite of precision-focused vintage watch collectors.
The project was born through a conversation started by Aurel Bacs and Alexandre Ghotbi of the Phillips Watch Department, after the auction house and Zenith collaborated on a small run of two custom El Primero chronographs, in 2019. After the success of those watches – in addition to the creation of a unique El Primero in platinum that was auctioned off by Phillips for charity the same year – Bacs and Ghotbi proposed a different type of vintage revival at Zenith focused instead on the Swiss watchmaker's pioneering, highly collectible, and perpetually underrated mid-century chronometer movement. And so, the Zenith Caliber 135 Observatoire Limited Edition was born.
Zenith and Phillips called on the expertise of the independent watchmaker Kari Voutilainen (who has experience in working on and casing vintage chronometer movements) for assistance in the restoration and decoration of the original 1950s movements, sourced from Zenith's own archive. Zenith provided their rare caliber 135-O (for Observatory) variant, which are the actual movements that competed in the trials at the observatories in Neuchâtel in the early 1950s.
While the caliber 135 was produced in a commercial run numbering approximately 11,000 examples, between approximately 1948 and 1962 (the movements can frequently found in the original Port Royal collection), the caliber 135-O examples were exclusively created for observatory testing and were never intended to be cased. These gold-plated movements were the absolute cream of the crop for Zenith at the time, eventually going on to claim over 230 best-in-class chronometry prizes throughout the movement's production years. The caliber 135-O has won more observatory chronometer awards than any other movement in the history of watchmaking and is still regarded as one of the finest and most precise manual-wind wristwatch movements of all time.
The caliber 135 began development in 1945 under the guidance of Swiss watchmaker Ephrem Jobin, who was challenged by the technical director for Zenith at the time, Charles Ziegler, to develop a chronometer movement that Zenith could take to observatory competitions around Switzerland and beyond.
Jobin came back with the caliber 135, a 13 ligne movement (the maximum movement size that was allowed at chronometer wristwatch competitions) with an uncommon gear train arrangement. The movement features an off-center minutes/center wheel, a choice that allowed for a larger bimetallic screwed "Guillaume"balance wheel (with Breguet overcoil and paired with an arrow-shaped regulating index) and a larger mainspring barrel for enhanced isochronism and precision.
The 10 movements cased and selected for today's announcement come from between 1950 and 1954, a particularly record-setting five-year period for Zenith's success at the Neuchâtel observatory chronometer competitions, where the brand placed first every single year. Each of these 10 movements were individually regulated and prepared for competition at Zenith's Laboratoire de Chronométrie by the watchmakers and chronométriers Charles Fleck and René Gygax.
Given that these original competition-grade movements were designed purely for precision, they lacked any substantial decoration, which is partially why Voutilainen was brought in to assist. Voutilainen and his team of watchmakers in Neuchâtel carefully disassembled, cleaned, restored, and decorated each of the 1950s movements by hand, with delicate chamfers and hand-graining on the bridges, beautifully beveled screw sinks, and snailed wheels all clearly visible through the sapphire crystal exhibition caseback. Zenith and Voutilainen intentionally preserved the original regulation of the movements, as done by Fleck and Gygax, throughout the restoration process – one consequence of that decision is that there is no shock protection system included in the movement.
After Voutilainen and his team brought the movements back to life, each example was cased in a classical 38mm × 10.35mm round case crafted out of platinum and featuring sharply tapered lugs, a large crown, a smooth polished bezel, and a brushed caseband.
The black dial on each watch is slightly domed, made of silver, and were individually crafted at Comblémine, Voutilainen's dialmaking workshop in Saint-Sulpice, Switzerland. With a sector-style layout, each dial has a matte black central portion surrounded by an outside ring with a textured guilloché decoration that's dotted by 60 small minute markers and 12 applied and faceted triangular hour markers, all made of rhodium-plated German silver. A sunken small seconds sub-dial in the six o'clock position has a light azzurage finish, and is marked with the individual original serial number for each of the movements.
One of my favorite touches here is the light "Neuchâtel" signature underneath the seconds display, highlighting the Swiss Canton that serves as the home for both Zenith and Voutilainen, as well as for the historic observatories where each of the movements had once competed.
The 10 watches arrive inside a special vintage-inspired box crafted out of walnut wood and fixed with brass fasteners, a tribute to the original boxes used by Zenith to transport the movements from the Zenith Manufacture to the Neuchâtel observatories.
For the at-home Zenith historian or completionist collector, each watch will also come with its original 1950s wooden box, for display purposes.
What We Think
Zenith has done an excellent job of educating the world on the importance and history of its high-beat self-winding El Primero chronograph movement. At the same time, with so much attention paid to the El Primero, it can be easy to gloss over the rest of Zenith's history in watchmaking, which is jam-packed with countless exciting timepieces featuring interesting mechanical or aesthetic attributes.
That's one of the main reasons I found the introduction of Zenith's Defy Revival A3642 earlier this year to be so compelling. It highlighted another aspect of Zenith's rich history, and eventually inspired me to pick up my own vintage Defy example. Watch releases where a historic Swiss watch brand opens up its archive provide an opportunity for contemporary watch collectors and enthusiasts to educate themselves about a part of watchmaking history they may have never approached or appreciated before.
So it doesn't bother me that the release of such a historically important and intellectually satisfying watch is packaged almost entirely around exclusivity. What other way could we describe it? After all, there are only 10 watches, each priced at a princely CHF 132,900 and will be retailed exclusively through Phillips. But Zenith could have easily partnered with Phillips and Voutilainen and completed this project in secret. Lord knows the three companies have more than enough well-to-do and interested clients between them to sell through all 10 examples. But they didn't; their choice to be open about the completed work means it could very possibly be revisited in some shape or form in the future.
The real impact of today's release for Zenith will eventually occur a few years down the road. The discussion started by the new Zenith Calibre 135 Observatoire Limited Edition will likely open up the eyes (and wallets) of countless collectors now interested in underrated vintage Zenith wristwatches powered by the commercial edition of the caliber 135. And that level of interest could even help pave the way for the future return of a three-handed watch collection like the Port Royal.
As with so many things in watchmaking, the six-figure price tag and almost nonexistent availability of the Zenith Caliber 135 Observatoire Limited Edition is entirely secondary to what makes it so compelling and interesting in the first place. It's all about the history and the undeniable quality of the watchmaking on display, placed in the spotlight more than 50 years after it was first brought into the world through the minds and at the hands of Jobin, Gygax, and Fleck.
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The Basics
Brand: Zenith
Model: Caliber 135 Observatoire Limited Edition
Reference Number: 40.1350.135/21.C1000
Diameter: 38mm (Lug-to-lug: 46.5mm)
Thickness: 10.35mm (7.95mm without domed sapphire crystal)
Case Material: Platinum 950
Dial Color: Sterling silver dial with black matte and guilloché finish
Indexes: Rhodium-plated and faceted German silver hour markers; dot minute markers
Lume: N/A
Water Resistance: 30 meters
Strap/Bracelet: Black calfskin leather with white-old pin buckle; 19mm lug width
The Movement
Caliber: A restored early 1950s Zenith Caliber 135-O; each example previously placed first in various Observatory chronometer competitions in Neuchâtel
Functions: Hours, minutes, seconds
Diameter: 30mm
Thickness: 5mm
Power Reserve: 40 hours
Winding: Manual
Frequency: 2.5 Hz / 18,000 vph
Jewels: 19
Additional Details: Restoration by Kari Voutilainen
Pricing & Availability
Price: CHF 132,900
Availability: Exclusively through Phillips
Limited Edition: Yes, 10 pieces
Shop this story
You can learn more about Zenith, Kari Voutilainen, and Phillips online.
The HODINKEE Shop is an authorized retailer of Zenith; to view our collection, click here. Zenith is part of the LVMH group. Although LVMH Luxury Ventures is a minority investor in HODINKEE, we maintain complete editorial independence.
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