A sculptural object created through the artistic interlacing of openworked platinum. The Tonda PF Skeleton 2024. An open-air mechanism.
Born of a saga that began two years ago, the Tonda PF Skeleton conquered the watchmaking world with its steel and 18-carat rose gold versions. Now, to this exceptional family, this new all-platinum version brings an extra touch of nobility to an already prestigious heritage.
With the Tonda PF Skeleton Collection, Parmigiani Fleurier has not just created a watch. It has rethought the age-old art of skeletonization, projecting it into a new era with a resolutely modernist approach.
The movement of the Tonda PF Skeleton PlatinumS is revealed in all its complexity, offering a transparency reminiscent of contemporary architectural masterpieces. Each component is designed to play with light, transforming the mechanism into a visual dance where solids and voids intermingle.
It owes much of its allure to the movement’s openwork, which delicately balances materials and transparencies.
The technique involves opening up the movement as much as possible, allowing the eye to see into the inner workings, while ensuring that the structural elements retain sufficient rigidity. The artistic openwork of Tonda PF Skeleton Platinum reveals the movement’s life and architecture, while preserving its balance and volume.
BETWEEN FULLNESS AND EMPTINESS
The artisans at Parmigiani Fleurier have expertly played the solid spaces off the opened elements to bring light into the very heart of the PF 777 caliber. This delicate latticework, meticulously hand bevelled, draws the purist’s eye to the beating centre of the mechanism, allowing it to apprehend some of the mysteries of its kinematics.
To ensure maximum lightness, the platinum oscillating weight bears the brand logo embedded in sapphire crystal. It is visible through the transparent caseback, which itself has been artistically worked into a masterpiece that blends in with the uncluttered structure’s 187 components. The oscillations generated by the wearer’s movements help to rewind the barrel, which is also openworked, revealing the slow contractions and relaxations of the mainspring driving its oscillator at a rate of 28,800 vibrations per hour.
COLOUR, FORM AND FUNCTION
Parmigiani Fleurier’s aesthetic and chromatic choices leave nothing to chance. The striking contrast between the sparkling light of the platinum and the ALD Milano Blue surfaces of the skeletonized movement, finely treated in satin and sandblasted finishes, and its sharp angles, carefully hand-polished, visually enriches the whole. This play of light and shadow, accentuated by the flange that extends the movement, not only adds to the watch’s refinement, but also makes it exceptionally easy to read.
With its elegantly openworked dial, this watch embodies a perfect fusion of complexity and minimalism, true to the spirit of the Tonda PF collection. The delicately suspended hour markers add a spacious dimension to the design, while the two openworked hands sweep across the dial with fluid grace. These are set against an open background that extends all the way to the flange, creating a visual continuity with the movement.
Far from compromising the intrinsic balance and harmony of volumes and proportions, this visual impact magnifies them, testifying to Parmigiani Fleurier’s artistic mastery.
A WORK OF ART
The uncluttered elegance of the 8.5mm-thick Tonda PF Skeleton Platinum underscores Parmigiani Fleurier’s commitment to the very best of watchmaking tradition, revisited in a highly contemporary manner. Sober and essential, its overall architecture highlights the knurled, polished bezel that catches both the light and the eye, but also the line running from the middle that borders the outside of the bracelet with a slight edge, creating a graphic, taut silhouette of absolute fluidity.
Despite the platinum’s solidity, the weight of this slim watch is evenly distributed. It is at one with the wrist, flowing with lightness and extreme comfort.
The Tonda PF Skeleton Platinum is essentially aimed at today’s aesthetes, watchmaking purists whose vision of perfection is driven by a keen sense of style.
Everything about this watch exudes balance, harmony and artistic refinement.
