STORIES
Stories of watches, passion and know-how
By watching a TNT Royal Retro marking time!
Since the launch of the first GrandCliff model in 2005, Pierre DeRoche has used a retrograde display (GrandCliff Heures Rétro). A customer once said it was a pity he hardly ever saw the retrograde function every 12 hours, so the brand developed a double retrograde hour display (GrandCliff Skyscrapers) so he could watch it 26 times a day. Finally, pushing the shorter retrograde sequence to its limits, they came up with a movement with six retrograde second hands which perform a delightful 10-second relay, the TNT Royal Retro.
Since the launch of the first GrandCliff model in 2005, Pierre DeRoche has used a retrograde display (GrandCliff Heures Rétro). A customer once said it was a pity he hardly ever saw the retrograde function every 12 hours, so the brand developed a double retrograde hour display (GrandCliff Skyscrapers) so he could watch it 26 times a day. Finally, pushing the shorter retrograde sequence to its limits, they came up with a movement with six retrograde second hands which perform a delightful 10-second relay.
Designed especially for those who appreciate watchmaking brilliance, the TNT Royal Retro has a dial-free “open heart” complication with the displays fixed directly to the exposed movement.
You could say that! Unlike the vast majority of these watches, which have a 30-minute dial, Pierre DeRoche made his mark from the outset by only creating chronographs with 60-minute dials.
It was Pierre Dubois’ passion for sport which led him to this innovation. “When you practice sport,” the brand’s co-founder said, “you need to be able to read your times intuitively. This is the only way to do it, given that our brains are programmed to read the time by 12 hours/60 minutes over 360° which is mirrored in the 60-minute display.”
It was Pierre Dubois’ passion for sport which led him to this innovation. “When you practice sport,” the brand’s co-founder said, “you need to be able to read your times intuitively. This is the only way to do it, given that our brains are programmed to read the time by 12 hours/60 minutes over 360° which is mirrored in the 60-minute display.”
It’s the love of a challenge and the family spirit behind the most iconic Pierre DeRoche timepiece.
Before establishing the brand, Pierre Dubois and his two brothers put their heads together to find a design which was truly unique. They came up with the idea of revisiting a highly original construction their father Gérald Dubois developed during the great 1970s watch crisis: a chronograph mechanism with three concentric hands beside the base movement. Reconfigured around an automatic movement, the concentric chronograph became the world’s first calibre to combine the hours, minutes and seconds of the chrono in one single counter…