Editor's Picks
Twirling Hearts: Richard Mille Tourbillons
Editor's Picks
Twirling Hearts: Richard Mille Tourbillons
Truth be told, the effect that the tourbillon has on the human psyche isn’t a modern-day phenomenon. But, of course, the tourbillon has had to evolve since the time of its birth, in order to traverse two centuries worth of shifts in culture and aesthetics. It was in this process that the regulating organ that it was on the backs of pocketwatch and wristwatch movements, migrated to become a visual point of focus on the dial-side. However, if one entity can be lauded for ultimately transporting the tourbillon into the twenty-first century that person (read, force of nature) would without an unabashed doubt be, Richard Mille.
Curiously, it was exactly 200 years later in 2001, that Richard Mille would give the world a tourbillon watch, which was quite clearly ahead of its time. Speaking about it, Giulio Papi of Audemars Piguet Renaud & Papi, who helped bring Mille’s concept to life, previously shared with Revolution, saying, “You must understand that what he [Mille] was doing was very daring! If you look at his very first watch, the RM 001 Tourbillon, I think this will be a timepiece that will be in horological museums one day, as representing the moment when everything changed and the future was born.”
There is a story told in this regard that speaks of the first ever RM 001 to have been sold and the exact effect it had on its unsuspecting buyer. This story is best told by Mille himself: “I started with the shop Chronopassion in Paris. The first piece was delivered at about 11:00am, and by 11:30am, it was sold. The owner of Chronopassion, Laurent Picciotto, called me and said, ‘I need another one.’ I couldn’t believe it.
Mille, thereafter, progressed the story of his watchmaking by creating ever lighter and more extreme tourbillon watches. Take for instance the RM 022 Tourbillon “Aerodyne” Dual Time Zone. The big deal with this one was the use of orthorhombic titanium aluminides. This is an alloy based on the main class of titanium aluminides, brought into watchmaking from the realm of aerospace.
The Richard Mille Tourbillon Pocketwatch RM 020, is every bit a pocketwatch as much as it is a Richard Mille timepiece. With its case formed from titanium and its 10-day power reserve, power-house of a movement, perhaps its most outstanding quality yet, is its carbon nanofiber baseplate upon which the manual winding caliber RM 020 tourbillon movement is mounted. This bit of genius is, of course, a direct transference of knowledge from the hallowed RM 006.
When first setting eyes upon the RM 19-02, you are bound to do a double take. For a man, whose watches are known more for being “A Racing Machine on the Wrist”, it’s incredulous that he should put a prominent 5-petaled, purple magnolia on his creation.
As hard is it may be, to wrap your head around how far and wide Richard Mille is able to transport the tourbillon — be it in an expression of technicality or in creativity — two things that can be said with certainty are: 1) Expect the absolute unexpected from Mille and 2) and, also, expect to have your head and heart thoroughly twirling every time you encounter one of Mille’s tourbillon creations.