Calibre Royal
This mechanical movement is a symbol of French watchmaking expertise.
Created in our workshops in Morteau, the Calibre Royal is the signature of the Pequignet brand.
The Calibre Royal embodies French haute horlogerie
In the heart of the French Jura watchmaking country, Pequignet Manufacture was able to rise to the challenge of creating its own manufacture movement which, for the first time in France, integrates all its Haute Horlogerie complications on a single main plate.
The Calibre Royal was created: a calibre praised as exceptional in terms of performance, beauty and accuracy.
The Calibre Royal reinvents French watchmaking
A single large barrel provides a power reserve, ensuring a guaranteed run time of 88 hours, with an exceptional display isochronism. In an exceptional feature, the spring is wound by the barrel drum, while the initial force is distributed by a central barrel axis inserted between 2 jewels. This original distribution system provides perfect linearity and regularity of the movement driving force.
Large barrel
A unique system, by means of the winding stem alone, ensures remarkable reliability and accuracy of the winding & time setting functions and other corrections. Exceptional manual winding system declutching when the oscillating weight is in motion Despite the presence of an automatic winding system, the winding stem may be turned backwards by hand with ease.
Crown winding system
Dual direction winding. Original system based on the principle of reversers, a reduced number of parts and improved general efficiency through reduction of normally encountered friction. In-house designed bearing with balls.
Automatic winding system
88-hour power reserve. The power reserve system also contributes to the reliability objective, through a reduced number of parts. This unique system offers simplification and reliability.
Power reserve
Double large date and day window, with no amplitude loss upon activation. This all-new system, unique worldwide, ensures accuracy, reliability and easy correction operations. 3-disc date and day with instantaneous jump on the same axis, correction via the crown with no corrector, irrespective of the position of the hands. No prohibited zone: the date and day can be set at any time without risk of damaging the mechanism.
Large date and day
A large 4-arm diamond-polished balance, with high inertia, ensures accuracy and regularity. This large balance also provides resistance to impacts, interference, and single or simultaneous activation of one or more complications. Central protection via damper system. The laboratory opted for a highly specialized frequency of 21,600 vibrations/hour (3 Hz) to ensure regulating part reliability and service life. These technical reliability characteristics make for longer intervals between After-Sales overhauls and servicing. Timing by compensation screw in solid gold with inhouse stud holder, including a lock strip providing impact resistance.
Balance-Spring
Watchmaking and its History
It is not commonly known, but watchmaking was a French discipline until the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, forcing two thousand Huguenots, the watchmakers to the king, to leave France… Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, watchmaking was carried out in the Jura region: an area which is part Swiss, part French… The phenomenal rise of quartz between 1970 and 1975 swept away the remnants of French mechanical watchmaking.
However, despite all this, France has kept its connection to watchmaking alive: ten of thousands French experts on the border form the largest contingent of “complete” watchmakers, the famed mechanical watch specialists…
France has the greatest number of watchmaking schools and offers the most highly respected training in the world. Paradoxically, there are no longer any French manufacture making mechanical movements. France has kept its connection to watchmaking alive, but without an incarnation, without a manufacture.
The Calibre Royal is the only one Manufacture-produced Haute-Horlogerie French Caliber for more than 40 years. It was entirely designed and created in Pequignet’s Haute Horlogerie laboratories and workshops in Morteau, France. It is a completely innovative calibre, not merely a reorganisation of an existing base, which, for the first time in France, integrates all its Haute Horlogerie complications on a single main plate. It is the perfect marriage of complex Haute Horlogerie with elegance, symmetry and reliability.
The Calibre Royal in a few dates
In 2008, Pequignet opened its in-house Haute Horlogerie laboratory, equipped with the latest technology, ably supported by the prodigious talents of its watch engineers. In 2010 and 2011, the company set up its manufacture workshops and unveiled its Calibre Royal collections. A French Haute Horlogerie manufacture was born and the Lys Royal became its symbol. Indeed, the high technology laboratory develops several movements of Haute Horlogerie in order to equip all the future timekeepers. In 2014, Pequignet is certificated EPV (Living Heritage Company), a State label that distinguishes French companies with an excellent hand-made and industrial know-how.
Thanks to its model "Royale Titane", part of the Manufacture collection, Pequignet is the only French brand to have succeeded in passing all the tests at the International Chronometry Contest. Only three brands managed to get that far among² 46 participants and Pequignet was one of them.
A world-renowned French calibre
Since 2011, our Rue Royale model received a wealth of awards, including “Watch of the Year” in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Japan. The renowned magazines Chronos and Watch File recognised it as the Best Watch in 2014, beating competition from the best-known Swiss watch manufactures. Never before in the history of luxury watchmaking has such a distinction been awarded to a French manufacture. Pequignet Manufacture is the face of the renaissance of French Haute Horlogerie.