Breguet Classique Tourbillon '5 Days'

There are tourbillons, and then there are Breguet tourbillons.

Abraham-Louis Breguet patented the tourbillon in 1801, devising the rotating escapement to counteract the effects of gravity on the accuracy of a pocket watch. More than two centuries later, the complication remains one of watchmaking’s great technical spectacles, and few executions carry quite the historical legitimacy of the name that invented it.

This Breguet Classique Tourbillon 5 Days Reference 5317, dating to the 2000s, packages that history in quintessential Breguet form. Its 18K yellow-gold case frames a beautifully elaborate silvered dial, decorated with contrasting hand-guilloché patterns and surrounded by a traditional Roman numeral chapter ring. Blued Breguet hands indicate the time, while a fan-shaped five-day power-reserve indicator sits prominently at 12 o’clock.

The star of the show, naturally, appears at 6 o’clock. The exposed tourbillon carriage turns once per minute, simultaneously providing a running-seconds indication and giving the otherwise classical dial a wonderful mechanical focal point. It’s an appealing collision of old-school elegance and unabashed horological theater.

Turn the watch over and things become even more impressive. The sapphire exhibition caseback reveals the hand-wound movement in all its glory, with extensive engraving that transforms the bridges and plates into an almost baroque composition of gears, scrollwork, jewels, and polished steel. It’s the sort of movement that makes a solid caseback seem positively unreasonable.

This example is fitted with a Breguet brown alligator-leather strap and a signed yellow-gold deployant clasp. For all its complication, the 5317 remains unmistakably a Breguet: elegant, intellectually serious, beautifully decorated, and just extravagant enough. When the complication on your wrist was invented by the man whose name is printed on the dial, provenance doesn’t get much better.

Few companies are so steeped in history that their name has become a byword for a particular type of product or style. Breguet is one such company: Their famously elegant numerical typeface and matching handset is now de rigueur amongst the most sophisticated dress watches, from Patek Philippe to Longines to, of course, Breguet itself.

However, these numerals and hands are but a single innovation in a long list of horological firsts devised by master watchmaker and inventor Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), a Neuchatel-born savant whose Parisian career saw the advent of myriad watchmaking creations that we take for granted today. Indeed, it was Breguet who devised the first self-winding watches, as well as the first gongs for repeating watches and the tourbillon. Not many inventors can claim the king and queen of France as patrons, but indeed King Louis XVI and his bride Marie Antoinette were amongst his admirers.

20th-century Breguet is no less storied: The company’s Type 20 pilot’s chronograph issued to the French Aéronautique Militaire in the 1950s provided a benchmark for military watch design. Its stark black dial and utilitarian look belied the sophisticated retour en vol (“flyback”) mechanism within the movement, which allowed a pilot to stop, reset and start the chronograph by depressing the bottom pusher just once.

More recently, under the current management of Mark A. Hayek, modern Breguet has continued to register new patents and amass a dedicated following. The brand’s “Classique” dress watches from the 1990s and 2000s, for example, feature some of the most striking dials in modern watchmaking, making use of guilloché patterns, blue steeled hands and Roman numerals. While the company’s contemporary offerings continue to increase in sophistication and the number of complications available, it’s surely these simple, gorgeous time-only models that best encapsulate the elegant timepieces of A.L. Breguet himself.

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Condition

Since our pieces are vintage or pre-owned, please expect wear & patina from usage and age. Please read each item description and examine all product images.

Warranty

We back each Analog:Shift vintage timepiece with a two-year mechanical warranty from the date of purchase.

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Most of our products are on hand and will ship directly from our headquarters in New York City. In some cases, watches will be shipped directly from one of our authorized partners.

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We welcome international buyers, please contact us prior to purchase for additional details on shipping and payment options.