Hands-On With The Christiaan Van Der Klaauw Grand Planetarium Eccentric Meteorite

Last year, for the brand’s 50th anniversary, Christiaan van der Klaauw introduced the Grand Planetarium Eccentric. It was a 44mm watch in platinum or rose gold with eight hand-painted celestial bodies circling its aventurine dial. That already sounds quite impressive, right? Well, when I met Pim Koeslag, CEO of the Dutch brand, at Watches and Wonders in Geneva a few weeks ago, he showed me a new version of it, this time with a case crafted from a 1.09kg block of meteorite. I was immediately blown away by the result and had to share my admiration for it with the Fratelli.

Luckily, on my way to the Christiaan van der Klaauw booth, I ran into Morgan Saignes, Fratello’s former photographer. I asked him to “quickly” take a few shots, and they didn’t come out too badly. But before we take a better look at the meteorite version of the Grand Planetarium Eccentric, let me first introduce you to the brand and “regular” version of the watch.

Christiaan van der Klaauw

Christiaan van der Klaauw is a Dutch watchmaker who has been making astronomical clocks and watches since 1974. With unique complications, such as the most accurate three-dimensional moonphase display and miniature planetaria, he pays tribute to famous Dutch astronomers like Christiaan Huygens and Eise Eisinga. The former discovered Saturn’s rings and invented the pendulum movement for clocks in the 17th century. The latter built a planetarium in the ceiling of his living room between 1774 and 1781.

In 2009, designer couple Daniel and Maria Reintjes took over the brand from Christiaan van der Klaauw. They made the brand internationally known and collaborated with, for example, Van Cleef & Arpels on the Lady Arpels Planétarium. In 2018, that watch won the GPHG Ladies’ Complication prize, and it recently went into space on Kerianne Flynn’s wrist during the Blue Origin all-female space flight. In 2021, CVDK won the GPHG award in the category for Calendar and Astronomy Watch with the Planetarium Eise Eisinga.

Since 2022, Pim Koeslag, former technical director at Frederique Constant, has held a majority stake in the Christiaan van der Klaauw brand.

The Grand Planetarium Eccentric

The Grand Planetarium Eccentric is still a collaboration between the three parties. Daniel and Maria Reintjes were responsible for its design, while Pim and Christiaan van der Klaauw were responsible for the technical side. It’s the first time that Uranus and Neptune feature on one of the brand’s mini planetaria. The man responsible for the calculations of the orbits of the planets is Christiaan van der Klaauw himself. That’s why the Grand Planetarium Eccentric is the only mechanical planetarium watch in the world on which Mercury, Venus, Earth (and its moon), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune move around the Sun.

They even do so in the time they require in real life, and their orbits are eccentric. In addition, the central hands display hours and minutes, while the miniature planet Earth’s orbit corresponds to the months and zodiac signs. The planetarium module is part of a new movement. Caliber CKM-01 was developed together with movement maker Uhrteil AG, a venture by watchmaker Andreas Strehler. It features 32 jewels, runs at a frequency of 21,600vph, and holds a power reserve of 60 hours. The movement has hand-finished star-shaped bridges and a skeletonized and gold-plated brass rotor with a tungsten weight.

Last year’s version was available in a 44mm case made of either rose gold or platinum. But what better material to use for an astronomical watch like this than meteorite?

The Grand Planetarium Eccentric Meteorite

The idea of the meteorite case came from Pim Koeslag. He says he had worked with the material at Ateliers de Monaco for dials and such, but he hadn’t made an entire case out of it. He started with the idea to make only the bezel out of meteorite. But then he was able to buy a 1.09kg piece of meteorite consisting of 92% iron, 7.5% nickel, and a bit of cobalt, so he asked his case maker if he could craft an entire 44mm case out of it. He tried with his CNC machine fitted with a tungsten carbide drill, which shattered multiple times due to concentrations of carbon inside that were too hard to machine.

However, in the end, he was able to manufacture two cases, each made out of 47 grams of meteorite. The plan was to make three out of that one kilogram of meteorite. Unfortunately, though, the third one failed as the material was too porous. The two remaining cases show the material’s beautiful crystalline texture, which only appears when the core of the meteorite cools down slowly over many millions of years. When you see it in real life, it almost lights up as it reflects the light around it so well.

On the dial, there’s also a meteorite ring. This contains five real fragments of nakhlite meteorites, which originated from volcanic eruptions on Mars. Pim found these in yet another meteorite, and the pieces, placed between Mars and Jupiter, signify the asteroid belt. This is a region in space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where most of the asteroids in our Solar System are found orbiting the Sun.

Final words

In short, this is one of those mind-blowing watches you just have to see in real life. Morgan’s pictures are great, but the feeling of holding this watch and looking at that crazy texture is almost indescribable. If you’re into astronomy and horology, then the Christiaan van der Klaauw Grand Planetarium Eccentric Meteorite is likely to be one of your grail watches. There’s so much more I could tell you about the origin of meteorites, the types of meteorites, the age of the material, and so on. Luckily, the brand has a very informative landing page that explains everything. There’s even a 10-minute lecture by astrophysicist Niek de Kort, who helped Christiaan van der Klaauw during the development of the watch.

The regular-production Christiaan van der Klaauw Grand Planetarium Eccentric costs €208,000 in rose gold and €227,000 in platinum, both including VAT. As mentioned, the meteorite version should be a limited edition of three pieces, each with a price of €580,000, excluding VAT. Two have already been made and, I believe, sold. For the third one, the folks at Christiaan van der Klaauw still need to find the right piece of meteorite.

Let me know in the comments below what you think of the CVDK Grand Planetarium Eccentric meteorite.

Thanks again to Morgan Saignes for helping out with the pictures!