Do The Baume & Mercier Clifton 10870 And Perpetual Calendar 10872 Break The Ice?

The Clifton 10870 and 10872 with ice-blue dials are two new limited editions in Baume & Mercier’s collection. The 39mm three-hand automatic features a date at 6 o’clock, and the 40mm perpetual calendar adds day, month, leap-year cycle, and moonphase indicators. Both creations use the five-day Baumatic movement and feature a light blue dial with a guilloché-like pattern. Are you warming up to these two “icy” watches?

It’s not often that Baume & Mercier is featured on Fratello. The last time was when the news broke that Richemont was selling the Genevan brand. Today, we’re talking about watches from a marque whose roots trace back to 1830, when brothers Louis-Victor and Célestin Baume opened a watchmaking business in Les Bois, Switzerland. Nearly a century later, in 1918, the name Baume & Mercier emerged when William Baume joined forces with Paul Mercier in Geneva. The name was officially registered in 1920. The Clifton, a 1950s-inspired watch, debuted in 2012, and last year, it got a makeover. It included a more compact, redesigned case, refined proportions, trapezoidal indexes, and alpha hands. Now, two limited-edition Cliftons debut, and their icy blue dials are hard to miss.

The Baume & Mercier Clifton 10870 and 10872

Let’s address these watches’ blue dials first. The pattern on them looks like guilloché, but it’s not, as it’s stamped rather than carved. The effect closely resembles real guilloché, but it costs less to make. The dial with its black crosshairs and minute track, long indexes, and light blue date background looks convincing. The color is cool too. There is something about light blue dials. They say “exclusive.” And yes, that is mainly because Rolex uses the color for its prestigious platinum watches.

This three-hand Clifton (ref. M0A10870) benefits from it. The watch has slender proportions. An 11.22mm thickness and a 39mm-diameter case with polished and satin-finished surfaces, topped by a domed sapphire crystal treated with an antireflective coating on both sides, accomplish that. The semi-recessed crown signals thoughtful design, as it follows the case’s rounded shape.

The Clifton Automatic is water resistant to 50 meters and comes on a three-row stainless steel bracelet with polished and satin finishes. It closes with a push-button butterfly clasp, and quick-release spring bars allow you to swap the bracelet for a strap without tools.

Baumatic power

When you turn the watch over, a four-screw display case back reveals the movement. Inside the Clifton 10870 beats the ValFleurier-made BM13-1975 A caliber. This automatic Baumatic movement features 21 jewels and a 28,800vph frequency. It offers a very healthy 120-hour power reserve and attractive decoration.

The movement features pelage-finished bridges, a sandblasted and snailed plate, and an openworked oscillating weight decorated with Côtes de Genève. Also on the back is a “Limited Edition” engraving that can be personalized. It doesn’t indicate an individual number or “one of XX” on the case back or in the press materials. So while the new ice-blue Clifton 10870 is a limited edition, the exact number produced is a secret. Now that is real exclusivity.

The price is not. This three-hand Clifton costs €3,700 / US$3,950 / £3,300. This is what you would expect from Baume & Mercier, which competes against other accessible luxury Swiss watch brands like Longines, Frederique Constant, and Maurice Lacroix.

Introducing the Clifton 10872 perpetual calendar

Also Baumatic-powered, but with a Dubois Dépraz module on top, is the Clifton perpetual calendar (ref. M0A10872). The automatic caliber BM13-1975 AC2 offers the same five-day power reserve as other Baumatic-driven watches, but it has many more functions. Along with regular timekeeping, this QP includes day, date, month, leap-year cycle, and moonphase indicators.

It presents all these functions in a nice, compact 40mm case with a 12.9mm profile. Like the three-hand Clifton, the QP features a polished and satin-finished stainless steel case and crown plus a scratch-resistant, domed sapphire crystal with an antireflective coating on both sides.

Again, the sapphire-equipped case back secured with four screws reads “Limited Edition.” And again, there’s no word on how limited that edition is.

Busy but cool and collected at the same time

The ice-blue dial’s guilloché-like pattern is similar to that of the three-hander, but this time, it’s not the star of the show. Instead, the indications are. The dial shows concentric-grained sub-dial frames and a matching minute track, rhodium-plated trapezoidal indexes, and Arabic numerals at 2, 4, 8, and 10 o’clock. The faceted rhodium-plated alpha central hands show the hours and minutes, and smaller, thinner ones turn above the different sub-dials. At 12 o’clock, you will find the leap-year disc with a red pointer, and at 6 o’clock, there’s a blue moonphase disc with a polished rhodium moon.

The Clifton 10872 perpetual calendar has a 50m-water-resistant case, which is practical. Despite that, though, going in the water with a blue, square-scale alligator strap with tone-on-tone stitching might not be such a great idea. It does have a quick-release system, though. You could potentially fit a rubber strap or the bracelet from the aforementioned Clifton 10870 to it without tools.

The price of €19,500 / US$19,500 / £17,700 is sharp. For reference, the recently introduced Fears Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar also features a Dubois Dépraz module and costs £26,950, although that movement has a solid 18K gold rotor, while the Clifton 10872 has to make do with a gilded openworked one.

Did these icy Cliftons warm your horological heart? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

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