Pre-SIHH 2017: A Pair of New Cartier Watches for Men

Rotonde de Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon: One of the Featured Cartier Watches for Men

Cartier’s Rotonde range is characterized by its round case and exquisite in-house Manufacture movements within. This is the collection where Cartier flexes its fine watchmaking skills with complications such as minute repeaters, tourbillons, mystery hours, their own invention to defy gravity, the astrorégulateur, and others. At SIHH 2017, the notable collection of high complication Cartier watches for men will welcome the new Rotonde de Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon.

The Rotonde de Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon is the first Cartier watch to bring together the minute repeater complication and the mystery complication. Cartier made the mystery complication famous in the early 20th century with clocks that appeared to have floating hands that moved on their own.

On the Rotonde de Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon, however, it’s the double tourbillon mechanism rather than the hands that “floats” within a round sapphire window at 10 o’clock. That, coupled with the minute repeater that chimes the time via a push-piece at 4 o’clock gives us a men’s Cartier watch that’s both spectacular to look at and to listen to. The in-house hand-wound 9407 MC caliber powering the new Rotonde de Cartier—nicely visible thanks to the lack of a dial—is housed in a 45mm titanium case that remarkably only measures 11.15mm thick given the timepiece’s complexity.

Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour: One of the Featured Cartier Watches for Men

Another novelty from the Maison is the Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour. It is essentially a skeletonized version of the brand’s already popular Mystery Hours models. On the face of the watch, the Roman numerals are brilliantly carved out, thus acting as both the hour markers, as well as the dial. As with the Rotonde de Cartier Minute Repeater Mysterious Double Tourbillon discussed above, the mystery complication is central to this Cartier 2017 timepiece. The magically floating hands on the Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour are positioned within the sapphire aperture at 9 o’clock.

The Rotonde de Cartier Skeleton Mysterious Hour sports a 42mm palladium case while the in-house open-worked 9983 MC hand-wound movement peeks from beneath the skeletonized dial. These two ambitious complex models perfectly illustrate how Cartier is steadily moving towards more serious watchmaking while still retaining the superb aesthetics they have become famous for. If this is just a small taste of what’s to come, we can’t wait to see what other men’s Cartier watches will be unveiled at the 2017 edition of the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie.