Collecting Breguet Timepieces: Descendants of Caliber 558

Part Four: The "Flying B" Tourbillon, Ref. 5357 and Ref. 5359.

Something seems to have gone wrong. In any case, the actual idea of creating a flat full guilloché dial without accentuating the open space on the lower half of the dial like on Ref. 3350 and Ref. 3357 was one which deserved to be followed through on.

The brand's designers also decided to get rid of the charismatic triangular small seconds hand on the tourbillon axis of Ref. 5357 and Ref. 5359 watches, clearly influenced by the new management team who arrived following the acquisition by Swatch Group.

This unbelievably attractive design element was brought into the brand's collection by Daniel Roth, who worked on the design in the final years when it was still owned by the Chaumet brothers.

The Swatch Group doesn't like its brands to have any association with independent watchmakers whatsoever. This position only galvanized as time went on, so there's a good explanation for why they wanted to get rid of the triangular hand.

A logo-promoting opportunity was seized, and the triangle was replaced by the letter "B" —  the first flowery letter in the name of the brand's founder Abraham-Louis Breguet. The upper stroke of the letter "B" was assigned the role of pointing the seconds.

The appearance of this detail led to the watch being instantly nicknamed "Flying B", superseding "Classique Grande Complication" which doesn't say anything about the watch.

Given that this name wasn't invented by the brand's marketing specialists, you can forgive the confusion with another "Flying B" — the Bentley Motors symbol which has been used since the 1920s. In this case, it's just a coincidence.

Ref. 3350 and Ref. 3357 use the same 558 as their base movement, developed in the 1980s with an active role played by Daniel Roth. The design of the tourbillon bridge was changed specifically to suit the "Flying B", but this wasn't a good enough reason to rename the movement.

You'd think the situation would be similar with Ref. 1801 and Ref. 1808 where caliber 557 is used instead of 558, but it stayed the same for "Flying B". The earliest examples of Ref. 5357 were fitted with second-generation caliber 558 movements (558.1 is engraved on the movements).

The vast majority of pieces use third-generation caliber 558 movements, while some later examples rely on the fourth-generation caliber 558. When this reference was being planned, there seems to have been a range of numbers reserved for its movements, roughly between 1000 and 1500, and missing numbers for this range are seen numbering Ref. 3357 base models.

This could arguably mean the launch of Ref. 5357 was planned prior to Ref. 1801, although it seems that project was deemed more relevant, which was actually the case.

The bulk of Ref. 5357 watches run on movements from 1224 to 1432. There is obviously a broader spectrum given that far from every piece sold ends up on the pre-owned market where information gets saved.

It's fully plausible that the yellow-gold piece which resurfaced on the market with a movement numbered 1050 belonged to a pilot series or was a unique pilot piece, although the latter is less likely. It's safe to assume the overall volume of Ref. 5357 watches released didn’t exceed 250-300 pieces.

Only three watch versions were released: 5357BA/12/9V6 in yellow gold, 5357PT/1B/9V6 in platinum and the jewelry model 5359BB/6B/9V6.DD0D in white gold with baguette-cut and pavé-set diamonds on its dial. The other models seem to have been discontinued but the page for these watches is still active on the brand's website, albeit in short form without any illustrations.

The jewelry model shown on the website has picture of a piece with a third-generation movement and the initial design on the caseback, whereas a new caseback decorated with guilloché is seen on the most recent real pieces.

The platinum version with its movement numbered 6064, a fourth-generation movement and a caseback with the initial design appears to be one of the last non-jewelry examples manufactured to turn up on the pre-owned market.

The movement of the most recent jewelry piece Ref. 5359BB/6B/9V6.DD0D bears the number 7781 — this is the piece with the new guilloché design on its caseback.