The Luxurious Platinum Edition of the C by Romain Gauthier Sports Watch

Before launching his eponymous brand in 2005 in the Vallée de Joux, Romain Gauthier had accumulated a twenty-year track record as a master of precision mechanics for the Swiss watch industry. Renowned for its impressive hand-finishings, Romain Gauthier produces only 50 watches a year that reflect a genuinely novel approach to some of the hallowed codes of historical watchmaking. The C by Romain Gauthier (or Continuum), the brand’s interpretation of a sports watch, belongs to the Freedom collection, which plays with more contemporary design codes. Making its debut in 2021 in a titanium case followed by a black ADLC titanium case earlier this year, this third model in a platinum case with an 18k white gold movement catapults the watch into the realm of hyper luxury. A captivating mix of old and new, the signature finger bridges on the movement are beautifully decorated by hand with an original dimpled texture. Meet the new C by Romain Gauthier Platinum Edition with a subtle grey dial or more assertive blue dial.

FINISHINGS GALORE

With several award-winning in-house calibres, including the revered Logical One fusée-and-chain constant force mechanism (GPHG prize for Best Men’s Complication 2013), the model we are covering today is powered by Romain Gauthier’s C calibre with exceptional hand finishings, a trait that characterises all watches issuing from this highly acclaimed independent brand.

Independent watchmaker Romain Gauthier is obsessed with finishings and invests an extraordinary amount of time decorating practically every component in a movement. Just to give you an idea of the level of finishings, some decorative flourishes, like perlage, snailing, hand-frosting and Geneva waves, are undertaken by RG artisans using hand-operated tools, while others like bevelling and polishing are the exclusive domain of the anglage atelier where specialists file the angles between the flanks and surfaces of bridges to become bevels that are then polished by hand using a gentian wood collected from a local forest.

When the titanium C model was introduced in 2021, then known as the Continuum, it marked a clear departure from RG’s complex, off-centred, openworked displays. Although it was a younger, sportier and more contemporary model, it was packed with plenty of refined finishings that ensured its status as a legitimate Romain Gauthier offspring. The C was revisited in June 2022 in a darker technical ADLC-coated titanium case with red glowing Super-LumiNova.

Fluid, Sensual Design

The latest C by Romain Gauthier takes the watch in a far more luxurious direction without betraying its attractive sporty profile. Perhaps the most distinctive feature of this watch (not including the movement) is its fluid, sensual case. With a 41mm diameter and a height of 9.95mm, the gleaming platinum case is far more complex than meets the eye. Starting life as a conventional round-shaped bezel, six straight sides are hewn into the bezel to create six facets – a design feature that is also present on the caseback. To highlight this original design, the facets are polished to reflect the light, while the rest of the bezel is satin-finished to provide contrast and absorb the light. The next idiosyncratic detail is the position of the crown at 2 o’clock with its blue or grey rubber crown rings to match the dial and strap colour (to enhance manipulation, the platinum crown can also be fluted).

The one-piece caseband and gently angled lugs flow smoothly to hug the rubber strap leaving no gaps between the case and strap. The surface areas of the case displays a bright polished surface, while the flanks are satin-brushed and divided into three areas with indented accents. Needless to say, the 50m water-resistant platinum case comes with extra heft and weighs in at 149g (compared to the 55g of the titanium models), including the rubber strap and pin buckle. Both models come on a grey rubber strap that flows organically from the case and which is decorated with an embossed pattern on the flanks and a smooth inner band.

Blue or Grey Dials

Both the blue and grey dials are based on an 18k white gold dial plate. The grey dial is sandblasted and treated with a special coating to protect it from UV rays, and the blue dial is made using a blue PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) treatment. While the texture of the grey dial is slightly more granulated, the matte surface treatment of both dials is highly contemporary. The Roman numerals and indices are made of 18k white gold with a handmade, satin-finished matte surface. The hour and minute hands are also white gold but filled with Super-LumiNova.

Off-Centred?

Having mentioned that off-centred layouts are something of an in-house speciality at RG, you will notice that the elements of the dial are also subtly off-centred. The central hour and minute hands are not centred and placed slightly above the horizontal axis of the dial. Continuing with the off-centred theme is the more evident off-centred small seconds sub-dial occupying an empty territory between 6 and 9 o’clock. Just grazing the top of the applied VI Roman numeral, the small seconds sub-dial interrupts the minutes track and is intersected by ten tapering lines of different lengths to mark every fifth second and two longer lines traversing its centre that thicken ever so slightly at each end.

The more you look at the dial, the more quirky details emerge. For example, the size of the hour indices varies across the dial, shrinking in some cases to accommodate a Roman numeral and extending quite flagrantly at 4 and 5 o’clock. As Romain Gauthier explains: “Rather than a series of enclosed circles, as we often see in watchmaking, I wanted an open, airy dial on which full or part orthogonal lines form vanishing points with the axes of the hands, reinforcing the notion of continuity and freedom.”

White gold finger bridges

The in-house movement you can see through the caseback was explicitly developed for the Continuum or C watch. Far more contemporary than previous in-house movements, this manual-winding calibre is protected by a series of horizontal 18k white gold finger bridges. Associated with pocket watch movements, the finger bridges are certainly a nod to historical watchmaking traditions of the Vallée de Joux but decorated with surprisingly contemporary finishings.

Each white gold bridge has a stepped shape – similar to the bridges on the Logical One – and is decorated with double hand-polished bevels. The bridges also feature a slightly raised hand-frosted border framing the jewels and the special dimpled surface RG’s artisans have developed for this movement. The interiors of the finger bridges are engraved by hand to create this unusual and very attractive texture. The mainplate is also frosted by hand.

The trademark gears and ratchet wheel feature circular, bevelled spokes with a circular-grained finishing, while the click, snail cam and S-slot crew heads are polished. Leaving no surface untouched, even the lid of the mainspring barrel has been decorated with snailing.

Beating at a frequency of 28,800vph, the movement delivers 60 hours of power reserve and comes with a stop-seconds function. Unlike most hacking seconds, which apply a brake on the balance wheel when the crown is pulled, RG uses a snail cam that touches and stops the balance wheel when the crown is extracted and – here’s the trick – when the crown is pushed back in the snail cam turns and gives the balance an impulse to start beating again.

Availability & Price

The Romain Gauthier C in platinum is an unlimited edition. However, given the brand’s low production figures, there are not going to be thousands of these flying around the market. The retail price is CHF 78,000 (excl. tax). For more information, please visit Romaingauthier.com.