New Version of Christiaan van der Klaauw’s Grand Planetarium Eccentric.
Daniël and Maria Reintjes were hand-picked by the company’s founder to be his successors, and although they left Christiaan van der Klaauw at the beginning of the year, there’s no talk of a change of concept yet.
The company led by Pim Koeslag, who acquired a majority stake in the company in 2022, is placing his bets on acknowledged masterpieces, introducing a new version of the Grand Planetarium Eccentric. The case can compete with the cosmic action on the dial here — it’s made of an iron-nickel meteorite.
The use of fragments of celestial bodies in the watch industry is no rarity, unless we’re talking about its use as the case material. You can only recall a handful of manufacturers who’ve gone down this road, who include Antoine Preziuso, Toledano & Chan’s B/1M, and watches by David Rutten.
Christiaan van der Klaauw Grand Planetarium Eccentric Meteorite
The 44 × 14.3 mm case frames a dial with a working model of the solar system, which shows the real-time orbits of all eight planets around the Sun, from Mercury to Neptune. The time it takes for each planet to complete an orbit differs, from approx. 686.98 days for Mars to approx. 29.46 years for Saturn.
Another type of meteorite was used in the dial composition: nakhlite meteorite, which is believed to have formed from Martian lava. The meteorite was likely ejected from the surface of its native planet after being hit by other cosmic bodies, possibly around eleven million years ago.
Nakhlite fragments representing the asteroid belt can be seen on the dial between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. The dial itself consists of nine pieces of aventurine glass. The dial is framed by a ring bearing the months and zodiac signs. The cosmic theme extends onto the decoration on the automatic movement, introduced by the company last year.
The bridges are decorated with large shooting stars. Availability of the novelty is limited to just three pieces. So far, they’ve only managed to create two cases out of over a kilogram of raw meteorite, with each finished case only weighing a mere 47 grams.