Frederique Constant
Introducing The Naked Watchmaker X Frederique Constant Slimline Perpetual Calendar Manufacture
The Low-down
The industry’s greatest technical resource The Naked Watchmaker has collaborated with Frederique Constant on an openworked version of the brand’s Slimline Perpetual Calendar Manufacture. Launched in 2015, the Slimline Perpetual Calendar Manufacture remains the most affordable in-house perpetual calendar on the market. Its simple, industrially optimized construction along with its restrained, classical exterior made it the perfect canvas for The Naked Watchmaker to work its magic and do what it says on the tin, which is to reveal the module’s inner gearwork.
Founded in 2017, The Naked Watchmaker is a venture by English watchmaker Peter Speake and Daniela Marin after leaving the company that bore his name. The website documents his incredible movement teardowns in great detail, offering a rare insight into their inner workings and to which many of us owe an insurmountable debt. The especial nature of the educational platform, being founded and run by a talented watchmaker already makes this collaboration a highly unsual one. While it marks the first endeavour of its kind for the company, it will also be the only one on which both Peter and Daniela have worked together; Peter, who has been the platform’s technical expert, will be sitting out of future collaborations.
Limited to 99 pieces, the TNW x Frederique Constant Slimline Perpetual Calendar has been cleverly open-worked, retaining its original dimensions – 42mm by 11.3mm – while adding height and depth to the dial. The movement is the self-winding FC-775 movement, which is made up of a perpetual calendar module built on top the Frederique Constant caliber FC-100. The perpetual calendar module employs a traditional, textbook construction. It is governed by a grand lever that samples a 12-month cam with notches of varying depth corresponding to the length of the months in a year, with deepest being February. Because it only accounts for a single year, the 29th of February can’t be encoded in this cam, hence an additional arm of the grand lever contacts a leap-year cam fixed on a 48-month wheel. This cam makes a quarter revolution a year, with a high step accounting for 29th February, preventing the beak of the grand lever from reaching the full depth of the February notch.
IMHO
The Insta-age has fostered a humongous appetite for watches with sheer wow factor, and the safe and logical thing to do when working on a collaborative watch is to base it off a timepiece that already has that in spades. To run with that train of thought for a bit, the Slimline Perpetual Calendar Manufacture is not the most expected and obvious choice given its straightforward construction with optimized designs of standard parts and humble finishing – no doubt tethered to its price point. But yet it was a watch chosen amongst the hundreds of watches The Naked Watchmaker has dissected, which begs a different viewpoint and makes this collaboration all the more intriguing. Thoughtful in its modifications, and ultimately, a celebration of mechanics, the result is a tutorial, watchmaker’s watch.
Tech Specs
The Naked Watchmaker X Frederique Constant Slimline Perpetual Calendar Manufacture (Ref. FC-775TNW4S6)
Functions: Hours, minutes, moonphase, date, day, month, leap year
Case: 42mm x 11.3mm; Stainless steel; depth rated to 30m
Dial: Skeletonized brown dial with a luminescent printed outer chapter ring and white lacquered hands with luminous treatment; moons with luminous treatment
Strap: Brown fabric strap with beige stitching
Price: EUR 9,995
Limited Edition: 99 numbered pieces
Availability: Can be ordered directly from a dedicated website here.