Christiaan van der Klaauw, aka the king (both the man and his brand) of the modern astronomical timepiece, has launched the new CVDK Grand Planetarium Eccentric Manufacture to celebrate half a century of astronomically inclined timepieces.

The only mechanical planetarium watch displaying all eight planets, showing real time orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune around the Sun. The Sun is in the middle, with planets following eccentric paths to mirror their actual paths as accurately as one can achieve in a wristwatch form.

This new CVDK Grand Planetarium Eccentric Manufacture is the result of a collaboration between the brand, Daniël Reintjes, Maria Reintjes, and Pim Koeslag, but its historical roots are in the Kepler’s Planetarium Clock (1995) which you can see at the link above.

Daniël Reintjes and Maria Reintjes designed the CVDK watch, and Pim Koeslag turned the compass and pencil drawings into CAD. It is a watch that even without any branding, you would immediately recognise as van der Klaauw.

This new commemorative model is 44m and comes in two variants – one in 18k rose gold, and the other in platinum. The dial is aventurine glass and features a star-filled sky. The hand-painted planets orbit around the rotating sun in the middle.

The in-house automatic movement beating at 21,600 VPH has a power reserve of 60 hours has a unidirectional skeletonised rose gold-plated brass rotor in the ‘sun with twelve claws’ shape of the CVDK logo with a rhodium-plated tungsten weight on the diametre of the rotor. It features star-shaped bridges with star shaped bridges with hand circular finishing, frosted star decoration with rhodium plating, perlage and rhodium plating on the mainplate,

The new Christiaan van der Klaauw CVDK Grand Planetarium Eccentric Manufacture comes on a dark blue leather strap with either an 18k rose gold or platinum folding clasp depending on the case metal. Pricing for the rose gold model is EUR 208,000 and the platinum model has an RRP of EUR 227,000.

[Photo credit: Christiaan van der Klaauw]

Categories: Van Der Klaauw, Watch Profile, watches