Manufacturer: Jean Daniel Nicolas Year: 2013 Movement No: 8 Model Name: Two Minute Tourbillon Material: Platinum Calibre: Manual, 25 jewels Bracelet/Strap: Leather Clasp/Buckle: Platinum pin buckle Dimensions: 39mm Diameter Signed: Dial and movement signed Accessories: Accompanied by large fitted wooden box, Certificat d'Origine and leather travel pouch. Literature: The Jean Daniel Nicolas Two Minutes Tourbillon is featured on the cover of Watchmakers, The Masters of Art Horology by Maxima Gallery and prominently illustrated in pp. 206-215
Catalogue Essay
Very few, highly experienced collectors know of Jean Daniel Nicolas, but many know Daniel Roth, the extraordinary watchmaker behind the brand. Roth set up his workshops in 2001 having sold his previous, eponymous company after enjoying incredible success in the 1990s. Not being able to use his name, he decided to use those of his wife Nicole, son Jean-Daniel, and his own. If the watchmaker’s family name could no longer represent him, the members that composed it would.
One of the most brilliant watchmakers of his generation, Daniel Roth first worked for Audemars Piguet in the late 1960s but it was in 1973, when he was still in his twenties, that he changed the face of modern horology as we know it when he joined Breguet, then a brand on the verge of bankruptcy only making a handful of timepieces.
Roth recreated wristwatches directly inspired by Abraham-Louis Breguet’s pocket watches, producing some of the first modern perpetual calendar and tourbillon wristwatches. Roth left Breguet in 1987 to start his own brand and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Jean Daniel Nicolas two-minute tourbillon is the only timepiece he makes at a rate of two to three pieces per year, which explains the extremely long waiting period for collectors wishing to commission one.
Made and fully finished by hand using traditional techniques, the watch is a surprising mix of classic aesthetics with guilloché dial and blued steel hands and powerfully contemporary vision with the unusual and extraordinary tourbillon architecture with its painstakingly mirror polished “bat wing” bridge taking central stage. The later has this shape not only for looks but it enables the seconds section placed at the bottom part of the tourbillon to remain unobstructed .
Twin barrels offer a power reserve of 60 hours and the traditional low beat tourbillon cage completes a full revolution every two minutes.
The present Jean Daniel Nicolas tourbillon is everything one can expect from such a great watchmaker, a no effort spared, fully hand finished, intelligently conceived and superbly executed timepiece that personifies his philosophy. Says Daniel Roth “I make objects which are beautiful to me and any hardship is soon compensated by the emotions I feel when I look at the finished watch".