Girard-Perregaux continues its bold foray into new materials and haut-de-gamme complications with last week’s introduction of the Quasar Light, a follow-up to last year’s original Quasar timepiece that not only houses its skeltonized tourbillon movement in a transparent, sculpted sapphire case, but also uses sapphire for its iconic three bridges.
The Girard-Perregaux Quasar Light has its case and bridges made entirely of transparent sapphire.
Limited to just 18 pieces, the Quasar Light ? which based on its astronomically derived name appears to be continuing the Swiss manufacture’s “Earth to Sky” theme established in its 2019 collection ? has its 46-mm case hewn from a single block of gleaming sapphire, a painstaking process that required more than 200 hours of work and hundreds of operations for each case. Box-shaped crystals in the front and back of the case offer a 360º view of the watch’s complex mechanism, whose sapphire-cut elements include the arrow-shaped Aerial Neo-Bridges that anchor the tourbillon (The original Quasar used blackened, sandblasted titanium for its bridges). The cage of the tourbillon, composed of 79 pieces, weighs only about 1/4 of a gram. The movement has a ruthenium barrel storing a 60-hour power reserve and a gold micro-rotor for automatic winding.
Among the non-sapphire components of the self-winding Caliber GP09400-1128 are the micro-rotor made of white gold, and the mainspring barrel for the movement’...