WATCHES & WONDERS: The H. Moser & Cie. Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton
Fergus NashEditor’s Note: Watches & Wonders is the biggest watch fair of the year and, with nearly 40 brands presenting, there is a ton of ground to cover. So, for your convenience, we’re offering a quick overview of each brand’s new novelties – touching on each new reference or collection and their headlining points. Stay tuned throughout the week for deeper coverage, some of which will include videos, live pics, and our hands-on perspective. But for now let’s run through each of the new watches – here is the H. Moser & Cie’s new release for Watches & Wonders 2022.
H. Moser & Cie. are about as esoteric a watch brand as you can get, with the Swiss outfit openly embracing their playful attitude in the face of sky-high prices. With colour names like Funky Blue, Matrix Green, and Swiss Mad Red it’s almost as if they’re teasing us for liking such exorbitant watches, but they have the engineering prowess and horological ingenuity to back it up. Their new release for Watches & Wonders 2022 is the H. Moser & Cie. Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton — one of the watches that continues to prove their place in the upper echelons of watchmaking is well deserved.
The concept of a cylindrical tourbillon can be traced back to marine chonometer, as can many great watchmaking innovations. The trouble with introducing them to a wristwatch format is the dimensionality, given that nobody wants to wear a 20cm thick chronometer on their wrist. Even with the complexity of the cylindrical balance spring, gleefully dancing up and down as the balance rotates once every minute, the H. Moser & Cie. Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton manages to keep a reasonable case thickness at 11.7mm thick, or 15.3mm if you include the wildly domed sapphire crystal. The choice of the 42.8mm Pioneer case shape is an interesting one for such an elegantly intricate dial, presenting this rather delicate-looking array of moving parts as a sleek and capable sports watch, with 120m of water resistance to match.
H. Moser & Cie. will use words like “improved isochonal properties” to justify its use of a cylindrical tourbillon, however from a consumer view the main appeal is always going to be the visual excitement of minuscule moving parts. The way the dial of the H. Moser & Cie. Pioneer Cylindrical Tourbillon Skeleton is laid out is in total service of analysing the magic, with both the front view and the display caseback offering intimate views of the calibre HMC 811 and allowing you to track every step of the movement’s operation. The skeletonised main plate and bridges are given an anthracite PVD finish to increase the clarity and contrast of the 171 components, as well as provide more opportunities for the time-telling subdial and gold skeletonised winding rotor to shine. The domed subdial at 12 o’clock is surprisingly legible for its size, with bold luminescent ceramic indices on the Funky Blue fumé background.
| Case Material | Stainless Steel |
| Case Dimensions | 42.8mm x 15.3 mm |
| Water-Resistance | 120m |
| Dial | Skeletonised / Funky Blue |
| Straps | Black alligator leather |
| Movement | HMC 811 |
| Power Reserve | 74 hours |
| Complications | Hours, minutes, cylindrical tourbillon |
| Price | 79,000 CHF |