Haute horology and Halloween aren’t exactly a natural combination, but I must say a haunted tourbillon definitely sounds like the plot of an indy horror flick that your obscure film obsessed friend raves about. It’s also the subject of ArtyA’s new spooky season watches, the Purity Tourbillon Halloween Collection. A trio of skeletonised tourbillons in sapphire cases with orange and black colourways in keeping with Halloween.
ArtyA Purity Tourbillon Halloween
The first of the three haunted watches is the Purity Tourbillon Halloween, which is the most traditional version with central hours and minutes and the skeletonised tourbillon offset at 9 o’clock. It looks great with its 46mm sapphire case and matching sapphire crown, allowing you to admire the movement from every angle. It takes 200 hours to carefully machine and polish each sapphire case by hand, creating an immaculate transparent finish.
As for the spooky aspect, that comes from the black architecture supporting the skeletonised movement paired with black hands that feature orange tips. Orange is used for the peripheral minute track markers and the stitching on the black leather strap. Black and orange are the signature colours of Halloween because of the spookiness of night and traditional pumpkin decorations. The ArtyA Purity Tourbillon Halloween is limited to 5 pieces and priced at CHF 130,000 (approx. £118,500).
ArtyA Tiny Purity Tourbillon Halloween
Leaning even more on the pumpkin aesthetic is the Tiny Purity Tourbillon Halloween, which replaces the central time display with a subdial at 3 o’clock opposite the tourbillon. For the Halloween edition, they’ve made the scale of the subdial orange and have elongated it so that it’s pumpkin shaped. This leads to a strange phenomenon whereby the hour and minute hands are not centred within their subdial so the hour markers on the scale are all at bizarre angles. It’s actually fairly unsettling, which is appropriate for the season.
The movement here is the Tiny Purity Tourbillon, which has the same specs as the standard version at a reduced size that allows the watch to have a diameter of just 39mm. Like the other Purity Tourbillons, it has a 72-hour power reserve thanks to a double barrel system and a 4hz tourbillon. As with the standard version above, it’s limited to 5 pieces at CHF 130,000 (approx. £118,500).
ArtyA Curvy Purity Tourbillon Halloween
Rounding out the collection is the Curvy Purity Tourbillon Halloween, which can be most simply described as the tonneau edition. The sapphire case measures 38.5mm x 43mm with the signature barrel shape of a tonneau case. The crown has also been moved from its traditional position at 3 o’clock to 12. This is largely due to the fact that ArtyA have essentially rotated the movement by 90 degrees to fit the new case. Instead of a horizontal configuration, the tourbillon and off-centre time display are now stacked vertically.
I actually like this configuration the most, especially with the Halloween pumpkin aesthetic of the hour and minute display. Located right beneath the crown of the watch, it looks like a pumpkin king with the architecture of the skeleton tourbillon below like a twisted ribcage. The Curvy Purity Toubillon is also limited to 5 pieces but at a slightly higher price of CHF 140,000 (approx. £127,500).
Price and Specs:
Purity Tourbillon Halloween Collection
38.5mm width x 43mm height (Curvy Purity), 39mm (Tiny Purity) or 46mm diameter (Purity), sapphire case
Skeletonised
30m (3 bar)
ArtyA Purity tourbillon, manual winding, in-house, flying tourbillon movement with double barrel
28,800 vph (4 Hz)
72h
Hours, minutes, seconds on tourbillon
Recycled leather
130,000 CHF (approx. £118,500) (Purity & Tiny Purity) and 140,000 CHF (approx. £127,500) (Curvy Purity), limited to 5 pieces each
More details at ArtyA.
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