Not only is Daniel Roth one of the most brilliant watchmakers of his generation and one of the earliest watchmakers to set up his eponymous brand in 1987, he is also credited for the rise and interest in tourbillon wristwatches. Roth first worked for Audemars Piguet in the late 1960s. It was in 1973 that he changed the face of modern horology when he joined Breguet, then a brand on the verge of bankruptcy that only made a handful of timepieces. Roth recreated wristwatches directly inspired by Abraham-Louis Breguet’s pocket watches, and by creating a Breguet wristwatch with a visible tourbillon escapement in the mid 1980s, he launched a watchmaking trend that had not been seen before and that became a rite of passage for every haute horlogerie brand and independent artisanal watchmaker.

Upon launch of his brand in 1987, Roth immediately created a personal design language, the most obvious being the unusual shape of his watches that later came to be defined as an ellipsocurvex, hands with pointed tips and dials with a horizontal guilloché pattern.

The Double Sided Tourbillon is most probably one of Roth’s best known models and a signature piece. On the front side, taking centre stage is the large tourbillon escapement with an original triple arm seconds hand featuring three hands of different lengths that indicate the seconds on three different seconds registers each calibrated for 20 seconds. The caseback features a retrograde power reserve and date indications.