Over The Moon – Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Calendar
During the Summer, I had the honour to visit the Jaeger-LeCoultre manufacture in Le Sentier, Switzerland. I already knew – of course – that I was dealing with a true manufacture here, but during my visit I realized that I haven’t seen anything like it before. I’ve been to a high number of watch manufacturers past few years, but Jaeger-LeCoultre surprised me in the most positive sense of the word.
I will do a report on the manufacture visit very soon, but first let me show you one of the watches that Jaeger-LeCoultre introduced earlier this year: The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Calendar.
Available in pink gold (reference 1552520) as well as in stainless steel (reference 1558420), a wonderful addition to the already impressive collector of the Jeager-LeCoultre’s Master.
JLC is from what I believe the manufacturer of most in-house developed movements all together. It seems that every movement in a certain shape, certain functionality or complication is being built from scratch or at least made as a dedicated movement for that specific watch of type of watch. In other words, they do not use 1 base movement and add a module for all the different complications they have. Move along now, no piggy back movements to see here.
Movement caliber 866 is the movement that replaced their former caliber 924 movement. An in-house developed self-winding movement that consists of 305 parts and features – besides time – a day, date and month indicator. As well as the moon phases of course.
The stainless steel version retails for €8,600 Euro which makes it a very interesting purchase when you’re looking for a dress watch with calendar and Moon phases. The pink gold version as featured above as well, retails for €19,400 Euro.
Both dials are silvered with a Sunray-brushed finish. The stainless steel model has rhodium plated indexes and numerals while the pink gold version have them in 4N pink gold. The same applies to the dauphin shaped hands. Little red accents on the date indicator and ’31st’ day are a welcome break on the silver dials. Especially with the stainless steel version this brings a little color to live it up more.
Both watches are being delivered with a high quality alligator strap with a 16mm pin buckle (in either gold or stainless steel). The JLC Master Calendar that has been introduced at the SIHH 2013 in Geneva, has a diameter of 39mm which makes it a dress watch that would fit most men. Women that prefer a larger watch also might be interested in this watch, although I think that most of the women who fancy a Jaeger-LeCoultre probably prefer a Reverso model.
More information can be found on the official Jaeger-LeCoultre website.
