Czapek & Cie has become something of a house favourite in these pages, and the new Antarctique Tourbillon Victory Green shows why the revived maison keeps earning the attention. Take the Antarctique — the integrated-bracelet sports watch that made Czapek’s modern name — cast it in 18-karat yellow gold, dispense with the bezel entirely so the glass-box sapphire meets the case clean, and set a flying tourbillon turning at six o’clock. Ten will be made.
The dial alone justifies the trip. Hand-guilloché by the specialists at Metalem in the house’s “Singularité” pattern, it is finished in a forest-green PVD that shifts from near-black to vivid green as the light moves — a colour with presence rather than novelty. Luminous green markers sit on an elevated flange, and openworked golden hands float above the engine-turned waves. Beneath runs the in-house Calibre 9, its architecture laid out vertically — barrel, gear train and sixty-second flying tourbillon aligned twelve to six — beating at a stately 3Hz for 72 hours, wound by a hand-engraved gold rotor visible through the caseback.
At 40.5 millimetres and 11.5 thick, on the integrated yellow-gold bracelet with Czapek’s Easy Release system, it is a tourbillon built for wearing rather than vitrines: CHF 98,000 on the bracelet, CHF 73,600 on alligator, CHF 69,600 on rubber. This is the third Czapek to appear in these pages in as many months — after the Quai des Bergues and the Promenade — and the pattern is clear: a nineteenth-century name, resurrected barely a decade ago, is producing some of the most assured sports haute horlogerie in Switzerland. Victory, in this green, looks well earned.
