Girard-Perregaux’s Latest Masterpiece: The Minute Repeater Flying Bridges

Girard-Perregaux isn’t waiting around for us to visit the upcoming April festivities in Geneva to release new watches. Instead, the legendary brand is getting a jump on the competition with an incredible introduction. Today, we look at an all-new in-house creation, the Minute Repeater Flying Bridges.

Girard-Perregaux is one of those names that will always stick with me. My father purchased a high-frequency model in the early ’70s during my parents’ honeymoon. Therefore, this lengthy Swiss concoction of a name has been familiar to me since I was a child, and I remain keen to see whatever the company releases. Well, if for some reason, I was asleep at the wheel, today’s announcement has the mechanical wherewithal to wake me! The Minute Repeater Flying Bridges is a sonorous and, dare I say, sensuous piece of watchmaking. Let’s listen in.

The Girard-Perregaux Minute Repeater Flying Bridges

Girard-Perregaux’s latest masterpiece is a smorgasbord of detail for the eyes! We’ll get to that in a minute, but let’s first address the formalities. The 18K pink gold piece comes in at 46mm wide by 17.9mm thick, which makes it an imposing object. Plus, with box-style sapphire crystals on the top and bottom, there’s an overall airiness to the watch. As the model name suggests, this is a minute repeater, a complication actuated using a sliding lever on the case side opposite the large crown.

While this is not a sports piece, Girard-Perregaux apparently went to great lengths to design the lever. Its case integration helps afford the watch a 30m water resistance rating. To support the modern theme, the watch comes equipped with a textured black rubber strap and a triple-folding clasp.

So much detail!

Normally, I’d spend time discussing dial details, but that’s difficult with the Minute Repeater Flying Bridges because the movement is the dial. From a numbers perspective, get ready to be impressed. A whopping 475 parts come together to form the caliber, which takes roughly 440 hours to make. Much of the time is spent adding more than 1,300 interior angles, or anglage. As a tribute to this artisanship, Girard-Perregaux adorns each watch with a small plate containing the initials of the watchmaker who built it. That sounds a bit like Mercedes-AMG, doesn’t it? From a legibility standpoint, the watch has red gold hands and a red gold inner bezel ring with matching indexes. These contain black luminous material for low-light situations. Finally, the tourbillon cage at the bottom of the dial has an embedded seconds hand.

The impressive GP09530-2198 caliber with a micro-rotor, tourbillon, and minute repeater

It would be easy to define the new in-house GP09530-2198 solely by its specs. We’ll share those, but there’s much more at work here. The movement has a white gold oscillating micro-rotor sitting on the opposite side of the main barrel. These pieces allow for 60 hours of power reserve and a running frequency of 21,600 vibrations per hour. Visibly, note the employment of Girard-Perregaux’s traditional three bridges with arrow-shaped ends.

For this caliber, two titanium bridges are visible on the front, while the last is on the reverse, anchoring the tourbillon. If we return to the front of the movement, we find it surrounded by white metal gongs. Twin hammers lie on either side of the GP logo. Specific design choices were made to improve the sound of the complication. These include attaching the titanium mainplate directly to the gold case and using similar sapphire crystals on both sides.

A beautiful, modern masterpiece

For certain, watches like the new Minute Repeater Flying Bridges are exclusive. Girard-Perregaux isn’t sharing the expected annual production quantity, but the production time will certainly limit output. Furthermore, the price is listed as POA, revealing that this piece breathes rare air. Still, it’s beautiful, and I love the modern approach to a highly traditional complication. Is it large? Sure, but that’s not unexpected for this type of complication. We applaud the introduction of this watch ahead of the onslaught of releases coming from all brands in April, and we’ll be just as excited to see it next month.

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