Globertrotter Steel Blue

Name: Globertrotter Steel Blue
Brand: INDP
Price: 250,000 SEK
Availability: InStock

(IN STOCK)

250 000 kr

Globertrotter Steel Blue

Alligator leather strap
Limited edition
30 meters water resistance
45 mm case

Globetrotter Steel

A bridge across the world
Having first made its appearance in red gold, the updated design for the Globetrotter now also featuring a steel case that co-ordinates perfectly with the large bridge spanning the world map of the northern hemisphere. Offering unparalleled aesthetics, this “world time” complication watch harnesses all the design skills and finishing dexterity at Arnold & Son. The Globetrotter adds to the prestigious lineage of marine chronometers that John Arnold created for the British Navy in the 18th century, instruments of precision and time telling renowned the world over.

After revisiting the aesthetic with the Globetrotter Gold, Arnold & Son returns once more with the steel version of its world time watch. The Globetrotter Steel preserves the Earth’s half-globe and sapphire crystal ring, which together make it possible to read the time north of the equator. A choice of two dials is available. One in tonal blue, lacquered, with sunburst decoration, in an exclusive series of only 88 pieces. The other, in silvery white, also lacquered and with sunburst decoration, with no limit on the number of pieces.

Arched and slender

Arnold & Son has designed a watch with harmonious, sleek lines. The case forms a continuous line from the strap to the sapphire crystal dome suspended above the dial. This large transparent hemisphere follows the line of the steel arch bridge that sets the Globetrotter collection apart from all other timepieces. This arch is openworked with a satin finish on all its flat surfaces, chamfered and polished by hand. The slender chords rest on two feet fixed with screws, like a stylised bridge spanning two banks. Here it reaches across half of the world, the most densely inhabited part of the earth: the northern hemisphere.

Vast and detailed

At 45mm, the Globetrotter Steel has a large case. The hemisphere was the guiding principle for the design, requiring a certain amount of space. Everything resting above the equator, including America, Eurasia and Africa, is all visible in a wealth of detail. The model is a one-of-a-kind sculpture, the continents first rhodium-plated and polished. In contrast, mountain ranges are rendered matt. The oceans are hand-painted with numerous layers of lacquer in blue pigments, enriched with mother-of-pearl powder which imparts exceptional depth and shine. In a lighter tone enriched with Super-LumiNova, the shorelines stand out at night, further accentuating the textured elements of this miniature showcase of manual craftsmanship. Arnold & Son also offer the southern hemisphere and can customise the world map of Globetrotter collection pieces to special order.

Manufactured and finely worked

The Globetrotter Steel is equipped with the Maison's A&S6022 self-winding calibre. Like all Arnold & Son movements, it has been fully developed, manufactured, decorated, assembled, adjusted and fitted at its factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The oscillating weight with a Clous de Paris guilloché pattern is skeletonized and NAC coated, bringing its hue closer to that of the movement. The A&S6022 calibre is decorated according to traditional fine watchmaking motifs: pearlized main plate, sunburst Côtes de Genève bridges, satin-finished wheels, and chamfered and polished screws. The specific finish used for this model is its very special NAC treatment. This type of plating uses precious metals which are close to platinum, resulting in a particularly high-quality anthracite finish that perfectly matches the grey case of the Globetrotter Steel.

Technical Specifications

Functions

hours and minutes, world hours (24-hour ring)

Movement

Calibre: A&S6022, self-winding mechanism
Jewels: 29
Diameter: 39.00 mm
Thickness: 6.55 mm
Power reserve: 45 hours
Frequency: 4 Hz / 28,800 vph
Decoration
main plate: circular-grained and NAC coated
bridges: chamfered and polished, NAC coated sunburst Côtes de Genève
wheels: circular, rhodium-plated satin finish
screws: bevelled and mirror polished
oscillating weight: engraved and skeletonized, ADLC and NAC coated

Dial

lacquered, brushed sunburst tonal blue or opaline, Roman numeral transfers

24-hour ring

sapphire crystal with hour transfers

Earth’s dome

continents: polished sculpture with mattified mountain range details
oceans: hand-painted, blue lacquer and mother-of-pearl powder
shores: hand-painted, blue lacquer, mother-of-pearl powder and Super-LumiNova
bridge: steel, chamfered, polished and satin-brushed

Case

Material: stainless steel
Diameter: 45.00 mm
Crystal:domed sapphire, anti-reflective treatment on both sides
Back: sapphire crystal, anti-reflective treatment
Water resistance: 30 metres/ 3 ATM

Strap

Material: hand-stitched blue alligator leather
Buckle: pin, stainless steel

Reference

1WTAS.U01C.C155S

Limited edition

88 pieces

CREATIVITY

As a contemporary Swiss watch brand, Arnold & Son continuously reinvents its approach to pay homage to the work of John Arnold, a man who provided solutions to the challenges of his era, notably the accuracy and reliability of timepieces. As a renowned watchmaker, he produced some of the most accurate marine chronometers of the 18th century and won several awards from the Bureau des Longitudes, spurring him on in his research into timekeeping. As an inventor, he filed a number of patents, including one for a compensation balance featuring a bimetallic balance-spiral (1775) and another for a helical balance spring with terminal curves (1782). He also produced simplified chronometer design principles that permitted mass production of these timepieces, a number of which were made available to His Majesty’s Royal Navy, making John Arnold one of its principal suppliers. One of his least known but most significant contributions was the modern definition of the term ‘chronometer’, which today refers to a high-precision timepiece driven by a movement that has passed an accuracy inspection carried out by an official neutral body.

AUTHENTICITY

A Fine Watchmaking House stands out for its mastery of the classics. Arnold & Son has based its identity on its ability to produce fine watchmaking complications that are linked to the heritage of John Arnold. These include true seconds (or dead-beat seconds) – a function recalling the escapements of pendulum clocks marking out the seconds – and dual time zones driven by twin regulating organs, which hark back to the original method of maritime positioning. The moon-phase displays also illustrate the brand’s mastery of the classics, while revealing a more unconventional side through the use of large moons in sculpted gold. Lastly, the power reserves of up to eight days offered by Arnold & Son pay homage to marine chronometers, which also benefited from an impressive autonomy.

The twenty or so calibres presented to date by Arnold & Son have all been conceived, designed, developed, machined, decorated, assembled and adjusted by its sister Manufacture, La Joux-Perret. This independence and creativity demonstrate the House’s ability to perpetuate John Arnold’s exceptional inventions.

AESTHETICS

The style of Arnold & Son timepieces is instantly recognisable. The three-dimensional architecture of their movements, the late-18th-century-style cantilever balance-cocks, the George-V-style bridges, the constant quest for multiaxial symmetry and the artfully crafted guilloché dials go hand-in-hand with openworked components, from a single barrel to the full range of grande complication calibres.

EXCLUSIVITY

Arnold & Son’s remarkably balanced collections are all produced in limited series and distributed around the world through carefully selected points of sale. They are priced fairly, because excellence is bound to honesty.

As Swiss watches with English roots, they stand out without being ostentatious. Arnold & Son timepieces are a delight for the eyes and the mind, and are aimed at customers who are looking for something unique.

Astronomy, Chronometry and World Time

Arnold & Son's three founding principles

Throughout human history, measuring time has always referred to the stars. It was by observing certain stars and understanding their cycle that the first calendars were established with impressive accuracy. It took several millennia before this precision was enclosed in a timepiece like the ones designed by John Arnold.

The golden age of maritime explorations and discoveries ushered this precision into a new technical ideal – determining longitude at sea. Its immediate corollary was the identification of local time, which changed constantly as the observer moved along an east-west axis. Astronomy, chronometry and what we now call world time are thus inextricably linked within one and the same question, to which John Arnold and his son devoted their lives, their art and their genius.

This is how these three dimensions – astronomy, chronometry and world time – have come to be embodied in the House's contemporary timepieces. Echoes of John Arnold's inventions and preoccupations, these pillars represent the foundations on which the Arnold & Son collections are based.

Chronometry: Be accurate

Rate accuracy, which is known as chronometry, is the key requirement of Arnold & Son's contemporary watchmaking. It is the standard of excellence for its collections, the first condition to be met and constantly checked, whether it is at the forefront or in the background of a watch designed by Arnold & Son. It is the most discreet of a movement's characteristics.

When building an Arnold & Son collection, all the thinking is focused on this chronometry. The manufacture calibres are based on advanced technical fundamentals that are not necessarily the best known. One of them is the choice of small, lightweight balances capable of rapidly returning to their isochronous rate after the latter has been disturbed by inevitable everyday shocks. Another is the routine use of large barrels or even two series-coupled barrels to store the energy required for the movement to function. They consequently provide Arnold & Son's manual winding calibres with above-average power reserves of 90 hours and more. A third is the particular attention paid to manufacturing the gear trains, roller-burnishing the pinions and polishing the gear teeth, as well as the precision of the machining and therefore the relative positions of the moving parts, a key concept in rate accuracy.

The tourbillon (or the fact of putting the regulating organ in rotation on its axis to best adjust the effects of gravity on the balance and its hairspring) was patented after John Arnold's death, but it was undoubtedly at the heart of his chronometric research and discussions with his friend Abraham-Louis Breguet, who incidentally assembled his first tourbillon on a John Arnold pocket watch in homage to this great watchmaker. Nowadays, the tourbillon has become a must in Arnold & Son collections.

While the tourbillon was not a complication in John Arnold's time, constant force underpinned the design of his marine chronometers. The regularity of the rate of the sprung balance relies on the consistency of the energy that it receives. However, this naturally fluctuates due to the circular and spiral nature of the mainspring contained in the barrel. To achieve a perfectly smooth torque, in other words a constant force, Arnold & Son uses a one-second constant-force mechanism. Housed just before the escapement, it stores up a small but always equal amount of energy in a secondary spring, the remontoire. Thus, every second, the sprung balance receives very precisely the same force to power its oscillations. These become more even, thereby creating the conditions for a high-precision rate.

Arnold & Son also works with another of John Arnold's historical chronometry indicators: deadbeat seconds, a mechanism that was indispensable to navigators at the time for calculating longitude. This mechanism advances one step each second, rather than six or eight smaller jumps in sync with the frequency of the balance. Instead of the term deadbeat seconds, Arnold & Son prefers a name whose very sound means accuracy: “true beat second”. Its jump is a signature of John Arnold's marine chronometers and a complication that is still alive and well in the House's collections.

Astronomy: Under the sky

The Pole Star, Southern Cross, astrolabes and sextant: measuring time has relied on the recurrence of astronomical phenomena in order to find long, reliable points of reference there that can be used under any conditions. The fruit of the human ingenuity, patience and dedication of countless observers and astronomers from every culture, these markers of cyclical time are foundational for Arnold & Son watchmaking.

Astronomical complications are a signature of Arnold & Son collections, with the moon as the heavenly body of choice, main subject and major inspiration. The distinctive feature of the Brand's moon phase timepieces is that they feature “astronomical” display precision as a matter of course. This term corresponds to an accumulated one-day deviation in the moon phase display every 122 years. Since setting this complication requires great finesse, the Arnold & Son moons generally have a double display with a secondary indicator on the case back next to the movement. This extremely rare display bears witness to Arnold & Son's involvement in all types of development and reflects its favoured themes, which are as much chronometric as astronomical.

Over and above their precision, Arnold & Son's moon phases attract all the light, either with a large moon opening up over half the dial, or with a 12-mm three-dimensional rotating moon, making it the largest of all moons. Whether in two or three dimensions, the moon is always treated as a small work of artistic craftsmanship, composed of materials that are rare in watchmaking such as marble or Paraíba tourmaline, or delicate such as mother-of-pearl, meteorite or aventurine glass. The Arnold & Son moon also shines at night, often with a subtle addition of luminescent material.

World Time: Here, elsewhere, everywhere

With ocean navigation, humankind divided up the world and invented longitudes, which were calculated by comparing the local time, observed using the sun, and the time at a starting point, kept by an extremely reliable timepiece. John Arnold was one of the leading suppliers of chronometers to the British Navy. He was the one who successfully improved the reliability and simplified the production of these indispensable marine chronometers, so much so that he became a benchmark among great explorers such as James Cook and later Dr David Livingstone. The indication of several time zones is therefore integral to Arnold & Son's watchmaking identity.

As this navigation was itself inseparable from cartography, for this world time complication Arnold & Son has chosen to depict a three-dimensional terrestrial hemisphere, making it possible to tell what time it is at any point.

In parallel to this graphic vision, Arnold & Son has developed a second approach to the time elsewhere in the world: with a double tourbillon featuring two distinct rotating regulating organs, making it possible to follow time zones offset by 15, 30 or 45 minutes compared to a full hour – a freedom in terms of setting that remains extremely rare.

Once again, and because this double display is based on a profoundly chronometric complication, Arnold & Son’s fundamental principles are interwoven. One never advances alone; there are always two – if not three – together. This is how a pillar's strength is measured: it relies on the next one, creating the conditions for a solidity that stands the test of time.