Blancpain 18K Yellow Gold Villeret Masterpiece Flying Tourbillon Ref 0023-1418-55

This Ref.0023 Tourbillon offered here is encased in a classical yellow-gold case sized at 34mm but wears a bit larger thanks to the lug and case design.  It is in near mint condition with light signs of wear.  The watch comes with box and undated paper.

Blancpain is billed as “the world’s oldest watch company”, but the history of the company is far more complex. Founded before 1735 in Villeret, the modern Blancpain traces its heritage to 1981, when Mr Jean-Claude Biver purchased the name to be a mechanical rebuke of quartz watches. Blancpain and movement specialist Frédéric Piguet would be acquired by what is now the Swatch Group in 1992, with Biver leading the renaissance of mechanical watchmaking. The design remains an icon for Blancpain and was one of the “six masterpieces” from the brand that exemplified “the living museum of the past” concept championed by Mr Biver. Blancpain would build six key mechanical watches over the next decade: An ultra-thin watch, the moon phase display, a perpetual calendar, a split-seconds chronograph, a tourbillon, and a minute repeater. The 5th mentioned is the one we have today and is the final piece in the Six Masterpiece collection

Introduced around 1989, the Ref.0023 Villeret 8-Day Power Reserve Flying Tourbillon is the World’s First Flying Tourbillon Wristwatch & Thinnest Hand-wound Tourbillon. The watch was made in collaboration with Master Vincent Calabrese, Co-Founder of the AHCI and inventor of many incredible notable horological creations.

Instead of going for a standard Tourbillon, they introduced their own twist on it resulting in the flying tourbillon!
The flying design provided an unobstructed view of the tourbillon cage, balance wheel and escapement.
The entire tourbillon cage is supported from underneath, on a single bridge. Blancpain’s watchmakers had to develop a miniscule ball bearing assembly to support the rotating tourbillon cage in order to accomplish this.

As the name stated, the 0023 boasts an incredible 8 days power reserve! It was the worlds first 8-day power reserve tourbillon, all of which housed within a 8mm thick case.