Vacheron Constantin

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Vacheron Constantin's Christian Selmoni on Watch Hands

Back in November Purist participant Tiggermelad had a question about the length of the hour hand in two models from the Traditionnelle family. He noticed that with some Traditinonelle models, like the manual winding reference 82172,  the hour hand is shorter in relative terms than on the the self-winding reference 43075.

I asked Chistian Selmoni, Vacheron Constantin’s Artistic Director, about what elements go in to designing the hands for a watch and he gave me a thoughtful reply, which I post below in blue text. The length of the hands is just one element that goes into making a successful watch design, and the creators have to take many factors into account in order to bring off a harmonious combination that is pleasing to the eye.

-          The 1^st hand to be designed is the minute-hand. Its length is determined by the position of the minute-track. Ideally speaking, the minute-hand should arrive in the middle of the minute-track zone.

Close up of the Jubile 1755 dial and hands

-          When there is no minute-track, well…. we imagine it and so we determine the optimal length of the minute-hand; it must also aesthetically match, in such situation, with length of the indexes or numerals

Patrimony 81180

-          Then, we determine the length of the hour-hand. For us, we don’t have an exact rule to determine its length. Our “in-house rule” is that the length of the hour-hand must be between 2/3 and ¾ of the minute-hand’s length.

-          In certain cases, the hour-hand can be shorter, especially when indexes are too thick for the adjustment of the hour-hand - meaning it wouldn’t be possible for this hand to be above the indexes. In such case, the length of the hour-hand will be adjusted to arrive just “in front” of the lowest part of the index.  

Like with so many aspects of watch design, determining the length of the hands is about striking the right balance between all the elements that are incorporated into the design. I find that Vacheron Constantin consistently gets these details right in their watches, especially the simplest of them, where any flaw in concept or execution of the watch will stand out in a negative way.

Historiques 1955, with no minute track

This topic did get me to thinking about why I have never actually gone through with purchasing form cased watches like the Historiques Aronde 1954 or Toledo 1951 where the dials are not round, as much as I like the watches and all that they do well:

It might be because I have an subliminal problem with the variation in the length of the hands relative to the hour markers and minute tracks, and becomes unbalanced to me eyes. Perhaps I should just get one and get over it. I would love to hear the thoughts of owners who have both round and form Vacheron Constantin watches on whether such things ever cross their minds.

Bill

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