Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. Breguet Celebrates the Year of the Snake with the Classique 7145 Lunar New Year 2025
Highlighting Breguet’s artisanal prowess, the snake and foliage on the dial come alive with hand-engraving and guillochage.
Unlike the Western tradition of celebrating New Year on a fixed date, the Chinese celebrate it on the second new Moon after the winter solstice. In 2025, Chinese New Year falls on the 29th of January and welcomes the Year of the Snake. Seizing the opportunity to show off the brand’s more creative aptitudes, Breguet has produced a tasteful handcrafted interpretation of the snake using métiers d’art techniques like guilloché and engraving. The eight limited editions are housed in a 40mm rose gold Classique 7145 case and powered by an ultra-slim automatic movement.
Like Breguet’s Year of the Tiger watch, released in 2021, the enigmatic snake figure has been hand-engraved in bas-relief on the gold dial. Armed with chisels, burins and a microscope, the engraver removes gold from the base to create a rich, two-dimensional composition.
Guilloché or engine-turning was a decorative technique introduced by Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1786 and a recurring motif in many Breguet watches today. Still practised by the brand in its Vallée de Joux workshops, Breguet has 30 historical guilloché lathes and a team of experienced engravers. The different guilloché patterns add texture and depth to the flat areas of the dial. The snake’s scales and scrolling foliage are further accentuated with a black galvanic treatment before different tonalities of translucent green are hand-painted on the leaves.
Other ‘unmistakable signs’ associated with Breguet are the secret signature and the hallmark open-tipped hour and minute hands. To respect the artwork, the hours are subtly indicated by tiny round rose gold indices. The 40mm rose gold case has a slim profile of just 6.5mm and features the classic straight lugs with screw pins soldered to the case by hand and a delicately fluted caseband.
The reverse offers a view of Breguet’s ultra-thin calibre 502.3. Developed in the 1960s, the 502.3 is one of the thinnest automatic movements in production, with a thickness of just 2.4mm. The off-centred 22k gold rotor is also hand-engraved with a guilloché barleycorn pattern. The openworked barrel delivers a 45-hour power reserve, and the 3Hz movement is equipped with a flat silicon balance spring to counter the effects of magnetism.
The Classique 7145 Lunar New Year 2025 is a limited edition of eight numbered pieces and comes on a green alligator strap with a rose gold pin buckle. The price is CHF 69,000 or EUR 80,900. More information at Breguet.com.
