With its iconic watch collections such as the Tank and the Santos, Cartier has long been a brand whose watches tend to appeal to those more interested in high fashion and social status than to the true fans of fine mechanical watches and high watchmaking. However, at the 2009 SIHH Cartier introduced several exciting new models as well as its own in-house movements – all in an attempt to garner greater respect for itself in the world of “haute horlogerie“.

One of my favorites that Cartier introduced was the Cartier Rotonde Central Chronographe.  The distinguishing feature of this watch, as its name implies, is its innovative central chronograph function.  The clever design elements of this watch are subtle, but if you take a moment to understand them you will likely be impressed.

If you look closely at the dial you can see that the hours and minutes use blued hands which are invisible save for the tips.  This is unlike almost any “normal” watch in which the hands extend all the way to the center of the dial.  As for the chronograph function, a slim blued seconds hand begins to track the time when the push-piece is pressed, while the large counter in the form of an arc records each of its revolutions up to thirty minutes. The simple genius here being that the hands indicating the time never obscure those of the chronograph!

Perpetuelle.com partner TheTimeTV recently released a video which covers the 2009 Cartier Collection.  If you watch the video here you will get a “real world” look at the Cartier Rotonde Central Chronograph watch – among several neat watches that Cartier introduced this year!

I am excited to see what Cartier will offer at the 2010  SIHH (January 2010).

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