Badollet: the luxury of grace and the grace of luxury

From Space - on your wrist: the engineering pretentious novelties.
The main approach in Badollet watches are innovations and luxury. Being at the top of watchmaking, the watch company constantly introduces the mechanisms of its own production, without ceasing to delight its fans.
In March 2011 at the World Time Exhibition the company introduced two models of the limited collections, which just shocked the experts of high watch category. These watches are as if "settled” on the wrist out of space. Of course, you cannot believe it, but the fact remains that the mechanism of this watch is made of platinum, which in his turn is made from a meteorite Cape York. This stone, "arrived" from the unbounded outer space, was discovered in 1818 and named in honor of the place where it landed.
As the scientists, who examined Cape York, marked a meteorite has been on earth before, Greenland has been inhabited. Today Cape York is the second-largest iron meteorite on Earth.
What are these mysterious cosmic "guests"? As the scientists’ definition, the meteorite is the body of cosmic origin, which fell down on the Earth surface from cosmic spaces. Typically, the size of meteorites varies from a few grams to several tons. Scientists maintain that during the year about 2 tons of these "guests" falls on the Earth. Stone and iron meteorites the most frequently are found. Most meteorites come from asteroids and comets, randomly hovering in the solar system.
As scientists’ investigations have identified the meteorite Cape York fell down on the Earth about 10,000 years ago. In 1818, it was found by the English explorer John Ross, during an expedition to the west coast of Greenland, the Bay of Melville. In this time the iron meteorite has played an important role in the everyday life of local Eskimo, who used it in making knives, harpoons and arrowheads. Nowadays the Cape York meteorite is considered to be the world's second-largest meteorite of its total weight in 62.2 tons (the biggest meteorite is a meteorite Goba which was found in 1920).
However, the choice of this material in creating Badollet timepieces is not just a designer's whim or abuse of the origin of the material, which will raise the watch value. In fact, the use of the meteorite as a mechanism of basic matter is a new elevation of technical achievements of Badollet engineers. The thing is that the meteorite - a material with very heterogeneous and irregular structure, which is easily destroyed by the slightest exposure to high temperature or chemical treatment. Therefore, the masters of the company had to make a little technical "feat", involving great skill, tremendous craftsmanship and use the accumulated experience of Badollet watchmakers, when dealing with such difficult material as a cosmic "rock." As a result two unique limited edition watch collection, which platinum mechanism was made of the famous meteorite, appeared: Stellaire and Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater.
The Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater was named in honor of the victory in the competition «Concours de l'Observatoire» in 1872, when the Badollet pocket watch took all three prizes. At the BaselWorld 2011 the model Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater was represented in that "pocket" design: the watch was made of white gold with palladium-plated, in the style of a pocket watch and is equipped with minute repeater and unsecured tourbillon.
In the producing of these watches the palladium - metal, can be called futuristic- was also used. Today he is at the peak of popularity and is used in many quite different areas. It is this metal according to legend was created by inquisitive alchemists and became the utopia of the XXI century. Meanwhile, palladium was also known in antiquity. One of the first mentions of palladium refers to 1803, when a London dealer in minerals received a letter from an anonymous customer, who asked him to buy a new metal that is not inferior to platinum neither appearance, nor properties. In support to the letter a small bar was included.
In the XXI century the palladium became quite popular metal in horology. The concept of "white gold" is in literally. The gold is discolored by the addition if this metal, giving it a distinctive bright white. The use of palladium as a coating has several advantages. Firstly: as platinum, palladium is not only rare but also durable. Secondly, the surface of palladium does not grow dim and, therefore, it will have been making its owner happy with amazingly white color for years. The models of the offered collections are covered with palladium and, hence, the unique details made of cosmic material will be protected.
Besides the "meteorite" material and palladium, which has become so popular today, in creating these collections designers generously used precious stones: rubies for watch’s "internal" - both collection mechanisms are based on jewels, and external decoration - bezel Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater is encrusted with sapphires and "baguette" cut diamonds.
The "baguette" faceting is featuring by a step type of processing precious stones, with which it is attached to a rectangular shape. Most often, such a cut diamonds are used when it’s necessary to bear and stress the clear line. The classic correlation in sides of such cut stone - 1.4:1. Basically, this technique is used for cutting small stones, as fairly it is simple to use. However, when cutting large stones, the main advantage of this treatment type reveals: "baguette" cut brilliant gives the qualitative parameters of diamond and its true color, as opposed to round-cut brilliant, which emphasizes only the "game" of light.
To buy watch Stellaire or Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater means to become the owner of a unique and remarkably beautiful accessory of cosmic origin, on the creation of which the skilled craftsmen of the antique watch company have worked to give you all the lightness and the incredibility of execution of these watches.

The watch collection Stellaire.
The model Stellaire is a wristwatch, which was introduced by the company in March 2011 at the world watch exhibition in Basel. The Tourbillon watch is made of white gold with palladium-plated, giving the gold a bright white shade. The round body 44mm is made of white gold and partly skeletonized. The dial is covered with sapphire crystal anti-reflective coating. Watch encrusted with diamonds 72 and 12 sapphires cut like "baguette".
The mechanism caliber BAD 1630 with manual winding became the foundation for the Stellaire.  The BAD Calibre 1630, the carrying frequency   is 21.600 vph, coupled with flying tourbillon, which is engraved with company logo. The designers in a very clever way set into the mechanism some extraterrestrial olivines that were extracted from the meteorite fragments. Power reserve indicator is located on the back of the mechanism and is visible through the transparent sapphire crystal. The power reserve is 120 hours.
The basic plate of the mechanism is made of the meteorite Cape York, and the bridges are located in the form of a galactic circle. The tourbillon carriage is set at position "6" hours. The number of the mechanism lines is 13 (the line - the traditional way of movement size measuring, which is equal to 2.255mm), the number of gems in the mechanism - 27 rubies. The height of the tourbillon cage - 7.8 mm, the overall diameter of the body – 30,4 mm. The frequency of the balance - 21,600 vph (3 Hz). Water resistant - 30m.
A notable feature of the wristwatch, you can not but mention, was a curious characteristic of the iron: its high content in the meteorite (91%) leads to the fact that over time the color of the mechanism begins to change, absolutely having no influence on the quality and precision. Thus, after a while the owner of this limited edition wristwatch will possess an absolutely unique accessory unlike other instances, because in this collection it would be impossible to find two identical models. This feature of the watches, which certainly deserves attention, yet has never met in the watch market, which makes the watch "once more" special.
The model’s strap is made of genuine Mississippi alligator leather and supplied with the deployment buckle in white gold with palladium-plated. The model is produced in a limited edition of 30 copies.

The watch collection Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater
The model Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater -elegance and luxury in its design. The title of this collection appeared in honor of the victory in the competition «Concours de l'Observatoire» in 1872, when the pocket watch of  Badollet company  took all three prizes. The case in 44mm is made of 18-karat white gold with palladium-plated. Bezel encrusted with 72 diamonds and 12 sapphire "baguette" cutting.
The base of Observatoire 1872 Minute Repeater Caliber was BAD 1655. The mechanical movement with manual winding and Swiss escapement has a tourbillon and a 80-hour power reserve. The tourbillon cage is located at position "6" o'clock, the minute repeater with the "hitting” mechanism is located at position "9" o'clock. The number of the mechanism lines - 13 (the line - the traditional way of movement size measuring, which is equal to 2.255mm), the height of the tourbillon cage - 8.85 mm, the overall case diameter - 4.30 mm. The frequency of the balance - 21,600 vph (3 Hz).
Platinum and other details of the mechanism are made of nielloed gold (nielloed gold - the standard gold covered with black rhodium), aluminum and magnesium is located at position "6" hour. The watch strap is made of black Mississippi alligator leather.
The company's designers also presented a more "modest" variant of this model without precious stones and dial, decorated with neat Arabic versions. The model is produced in a limited edition of 12 copies.