Girard Perregaux Foudrayante Watches

A new model will join Girard-Perregaux’s iconic Vintage 1945 watch collection. The Girard-Perregaux Vintage 1945 Off-Centered Hour and Minute watch will feature a 36 X 37mm case in 18K white or rose gold, a curved sapphire crystal, and an alligator strap with a matching gold folding clasp.The watch is distinguished by a hand-crafted “grand feu” enamel dial whose creation involves the meticulous firing of multiple layers of powdered enamel atop a plate. The classical dial, complete with enameled red and black roman and arabic figures, is contrasted by blued steel leaf-shaped hands.This Girard-Perregaux watch is animated by a Girard-Perregaux GP01900 caliber movement. Manufactured by Girard-Perregaux, this automatic-winding mechanism offers a sub seconds and date display, as well as a power reserve indicator. The power reserve of the movement is approximately 45 hours, when fully wound.

Girard-Perregaux Cat’s Eye Small SecondThe new Girard-Perregaux Cat`s Eye Small Second ladies watch will be officially introduced in January, 2011 at the upcoming Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie SIHH 2011 event.Introduced in 2004, GP’s Cat’s Eye line of ladies watches enjoys considerable popularity among women of all ages. Soon after the collection’s introduction, the Swiss watchmaker even received “The Most Beautiful Women’s Watch of the Year” prize in Tokyo.Unlike most ladies watches that tend to feature simple quartz or very basic automatic movements, the Cat’s Eye collection is powered by serious manufacture-made calibers and offers a great number of complications. Those include power reserve indicators, retrograde indicators, annual calendars, moon phase displays and even zodiac calendars.It is actually strange that they still didn’t introduce a model with a tourbillon or a perpetual calendar.The reason, probably, is that the watch is delivered in a rather compact ellipse-shaped case with its major and minor diameters being only 35.25 mm and 30.25 mm respectively. It is also less than 11 mm in height, which leaves around 6 mm of vertical space for a movement.This particular model seems to be one of the least sophisticated in the range, however.Powered by the Caliber GP3300-0044 automatic movement (a close relative of the GP3300-50 movement that animates the fabulous Girard-Perregaux 1966 Small Second watch,) it comes with a decorated red gold oscillating weight, but features only basic functions, like hours, minutes, small seconds display and a small date indicator.As you can see on the pictures, the small seconds and date indicators are unevenly spaced along the major axis of the dial with the former located on the left side and the latter on the right side. Although their positioning may look a trifle negligent at the first look, there is clearly some basic geometry behind this.Look. While the center of the date window is positioned almost exactly in the F2 focus of the ellipse (sorry, didn’t have a ruler with me,) the small seconds display looks like it stays right between the F1 focus and the center of the ellipse. It also clearly stays on the same axis with the two diamonds denoting 7 o’clock and 11 o’clock positions. Very nice!The watches are delivered in a choice of two cases –one in 18-carat rose gold and the other in white gold– and sport traditional for the line mother of pearl dials, either black or white.Still no info about the price, but expect the MSRP to be set somewhere near $15,000 mark.