Minerva has taken the suspended Exo Tourbillon it showed earlier this year in an olive-green dial and stripped the dial away entirely. Reference 137551, the Exo Tourbillon Skeleton Limited Edition 18, is an openworked version built around a carved agate cameo of the goddess the manufacture is named for, and it is the house's clearest statement yet that it intends to stand as a name in its own right.
A standalone Minerva
The watch arrives under the Minerva name alone, without the dual Montblanc-Minerva signature the Villeret manufacture's pieces have carried in recent years, even as it stays within the Montblanc Maison. The branding change is more than cosmetic: it frames Villeret's chronograph and tourbillon work — made on movements descended from Minerva's own historic calibres — as a separate high-watchmaking line rather than a wing of a pen-and-leather house.
The goddess on the dial
The off-centre hours-and-minutes sub-dial at twelve is the centrepiece. It is a cameo cut from agate: a Persian-blue base with a white agate profile of Minerva in her crested helmet raised against it, the kind of hardstone carving more often associated with antique jewellery than a wristwatch dial. Around and below it the dial is fully skeletonised, so the cameo appears to float over the movement. The seconds are read from a heat-blued arrow, and the tourbillon frame is coated in rose gold, engraved with a Roman frieze and the word "Minerva" filled in blue lacquer.
The Exo Tourbillon
At six o'clock sits the patented Exo Tourbillon, Minerva's signature construction, in which the large screw balance is mounted above the tourbillon cage rather than inside it. That balance measures 14.5mm across and carries 18 regulating screws — unusually big for a wristwatch, and the reason the cage can stay comparatively light while the oscillator stays large. The hand-wound calibre M18.69 that drives it is itself skeletonised: 41.95mm by 6.45mm, 188 components, 19 jewels, running at 18,000 vibrations per hour with a power reserve of about 50 hours. Minerva quotes some 400 hand-polished inner angles across the movement, and says the watch is held to its own 500-hour laboratory test before it ships.
A run of eighteen
The case is polished 18k rose gold, 44.8mm in diameter and about 15.1mm thick, water resistant to 30 metres, on a semi-matte Persian-blue alligator strap lined with a Roman-frieze pattern and closed by a rose-gold triple-folding clasp. The edition is limited to 18 pieces — the number tying back to the manufacture's recent limited editions — and Minerva has not published a price, which for a hand-finished, hardstone-dialled tourbillon from Villeret is the expected position rather than an omission. What the watch is really advertising is the combination it brings together: a métiers d'art dial, a historic tourbillon construction, and a brand name that, for the first time in a while, stands by itself.
Sources: Monochrome Watches.
