De Bethune DB Kind of Two Tourbillon (Live Pics & Price)

De Bethune launches the DB Kind of Two Tourbillon, a double-sided or pivoting watch with two distinct faces and two distinct moods. A beautiful fusion of past and present, one side of the watch reveals a contemporary design with a tourbillon; the other reveals a more traditional face. Let’s take a closer look at yet another impressive creation by master watchmaker Denis Flageollet and his team.

Janus watches

Double-sided watches double the technical and aesthetic potential of a timepiece. In recent history, we have plenty of candidates ranging from the extraordinarily complex two-faced Leroy 01 pocket watch (completed in 1904), the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime wristwatch (2014) or the Vacheron Constantin Reference 57260 (2015), to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s sleek Reverso made by Jaeger-LeCoultre in circulation since the 1930s.

Like the two faces of the Roman god Janus, with one face representing the past and the other the future, the DB Kind of Two Tourbillon embraces design elements from the past and future of watchmaking. Mulling over the idea for years, master watchmaker Denis Flageollet realised that a swivel watch would allow him to express the two faces of his brand perfectly.

Depending on your mood, you can flip the watch to reveal a contemporary face with central hours and minutes and a 30-second tourbillon at 6 o’clock. Flip it over for a more traditional aesthetic with a hand-guilloché central area, Arabic numerals and classic blued Breguet hands like those already featured on other De Bethune models.

The Future and the Past

The silver and blue face of the future features an intriguing mix of shapes and different finishings to create depth and relief. The use of heat-blued titanium and hand-polished titanium surfaces with shot-blasted areas is hallmark De Bethune. Two central discs, one for the hours with blue spherical dots and the other for the tourbillon, intersect one another. De Bethune’s signature delta-shaped bridge appears in the centre of the dial decorated with a curved ribbed pattern and a bright polished frame. The triangle shape appears again, insinuated on the external border of the hours chapter ring with three triangular corners decorated with a stacked chevron pattern. Two openworked areas, between 10 and 11 and 2 and 3 o’clock, offer a glimpse of the hand-snailed twin barrels. The blued central hour and minute hands have a polished insert. The complication at 6 o’clock is De Bethune’s fast-spinning, ultra-lightweight 30-second tourbillon held in place by a curved bridge.

The other face of the watch is far more traditional with a refined hand-guilloché pattern in the centre followed by a chapter ring with classic Arabic numerals and culminating in a third ring with a graduated track with precision seconds reading, very similar to the layout of the DB29 Maxichrono. To increase the sense of depth, the dial is composed of three different levels building up from the central guilloché area. The three central Breguet-style hands are made from blued titanium and polished by hand.

Pivoting Case

The case is made from ultra-light grade 5 titanium and measures 42.8mm with a surprisingly thin height of 9.5mm for a watch with a tourbillon. A single crown, which appears at 12 on the contemporary face and at 6 o’clock on the traditional side, is shared by both for winding and setting the time.

Floating lugs are a trademark feature of many De Bethune watches. Redesigned for the occasion, the articulated lugs titanium lugs have been equipped with an ingenious rotating mechanism made up of 28 components. The round case, borrowed from the DB29 collection, rotates on a central axis and swivels smoothly in either direction. Thanks to a small notch, the case aligns itself perfectly with the floating lugs.

Calibre DB2579

Getting the hands to turn in the right direction on both faces meant the development of a sophisticated mechanism of gears and pinions resulting in the creation of a brand new calibre entirely developed at De Bethune’s workshop in L’Auberson. Calibre DB2579 is equipped with several patented De Bethune innovations: the self-regulating twin barrels offering 5 days (120 hours)of power reserve; the (blued) titanium balance wheel with gold inserts; the De Bethune balance spring with a flat terminal curve; and the ultra-light De Bethune 30-second tourbillon in titanium. The 256-part movement beats at 36,600 vibrations per hour and has 32 jewels.

Availability & price

The De Bethune DB Kind of Two Tourbillon comes with an extra-supple alligator leather strap and a pin buckle in polished titanium. The retail price is CHF 215,000 (excl. tax).

More information at www.debethune.ch