Ochs und Junior Drops Trio of Stripped Back Perpetual Calendars
Keep it wound and you won’t have to adjust the date until 2100.
Ochs und Junior has launched three perpetual calendars that bring the Swiss brand’s disruptive, simplified design language to the most classical of complications.
The Calendario Cent’anni (CCA), or Hundred Year Calendar, is presented in three different colorways and displays date, month, leap year and running seconds, without relying on the traditional perpetual calendar arrangement of three sub-dials in a 3/6/9 configuration. The two centrally mounted hands, displaying hours and minutes, are the only traditional indications present.
Running seconds is presented as a small rotating disc at the six o’clock position, while 31 square apertures, set into the dial in a spiral formation, indicate the date. The month is displayed using a central disc, rotating inside a scale of 12 indices and leap year aligns once every four years, using a smaller, concentrically mounted disc.
It’s worth noting that while watches with the perpetual calendar complication must mechanically keep track of the date until 2100 (including leap years with 29 days in February), they aren’t required to display every element of that date. Here, the day and moonphase, which are displayed on the majority of traditional perpetual calendars, are omitted.
Ochs und Junior was founded in 2006 as a platform for the genius-level watchmaking of Ludwig Oechslin, who uses complex micro-mechanics to present the information offered by traditional complications in a simplified manner. When Ulysse Nardin was relaunched in the early 1980s, Oechslin was hired to develop complicated watches, such as the famed Trilogy of Time and Freak models.
Like other Ochs und Junior models, the CCA’s 40mm, two-piece titanium case is left unfinished for a raw, industrial aesthetic that you will almost certainly either appreciate or criticize. Inside, Oechslin has built his own calendar module on top of Ulysse Nardin’s automatic UN320 movement, which features a silicone escapement and hairspring. Two of the three references use a sparse mix of baton and dot markers, whilst the third uses Arabic numerals, which is still something of a rarity for the brand.
Perpetual calendars don’t usually come cheap, given the complexity of their movements and the sheer number of parts that need to be finely decorated. But Ochs und Junior doesn’t do fine decoration and Oechslin somehow achieves his perpetual calendar module using just nine components. As such, the CCA is priced at CHF 15,230 ($16,660 USD). While it’s not the most affordable mechanical perpetual calendar on the market (that honor still goes to the Frederique Constant Slimline Perpetual Calendar at $8,895 USD), it is close.
The Ochs und Junior Calendario Cent’anni is available to pre-order now, using watchmaking’s traditional ”Souscription” model of 50% deposit, with the remainder payable upon delivery in the summer.
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