Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/grail-watch-3-trilobe-une-folle-soiree-wild-night/
As it happened, Massonneau met the person who would have a major hand in the realization of his dream — Volcy Bloch. Massonneau understood that to create his brand he would need a strong head of communications and offered the role to Bloch. She says, “I had worked for 20 years in a big group [Bloch worked for perfume and cosmetics brand Marionnaud, owned by the A.S. Watson Group and, prior to that, was with Piaget] and felt it was time for a change, but I was struck by Gautier’s intelligence, enthusiasm, passion and inventiveness.”
Next, Massonneau had to find someone who could help bring his vision to life. For this, he had to follow the footsteps of the Huguenots and make a sojourn over the Alps to his neighboring country. His pilgrimage to Switzerland eventually brought him to Chronode, the workshop of the talented Jean-François Mojon. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s the man behind Max Büsser’s Legacy Machine No. 1. He also co-created the detent escapement watch for Urban Jürgensen, together with his friend Kari Voutilainen, and is the designer of Harry Winston’s Opus X. In recent years, Mojon has been behind the incredible split seconds chronograph movement used by Czapek for its Antarctique Rattrapante. Together, they sat down and discussed Massonneau’s idea. What was meant to be a 30-minute meeting turned into a five-hour conversation. “I missed my flight home,” recalls Massonneau with a laugh.
Mojon loved Massonneau’s vision for three counterclockwise rotating rings with fixed indicators. After initial development with Mojon, Massonneau also worked on further development of his base caliber, the X-Centric, with Cercle des Horlogers, one of the major rising stars in the world of complication specialists. This movement, whose architecture is stunning to behold, features an ultra efficient tungsten carbide micro-rotor. It also features a 4Hz vibrational speed with torque from the barrel optimized to drive the disks that are at the core of Massonneau’s expressionist time-telling vision. The other thing that was important to Massonneau was that every aspect of his watch was finished to a high degree. Finally, for him, the size of his watches was of critical importance. He explains, “No matter what, I absolutely did not want to create something larger than 41mm. I felt that we had very much embraced a renewed era of classic proportions and sizes, and that many of the more adventurous watches today are simply too large for current tastes. I wanted my watches to be elegant.”
He continues, “Our first watch I named Les Matinaux after a book of poetry by René Char. In English, this means ‘The Dawn Breakers,’ which I thought would be a great name for a first watch. Char is an incredible character, a hero of the French Resistance and a key figure of the Surrealist movement, and possibly the most important French poet since Rimbaud. His writing paves the way for hope and boldness.”
Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/grail-watch-3-trilobe-une-folle-soiree-wild-night/
