Building the Foundation, Part 2: The In-House Movements of Tutima

While we all applaud the handful of brands that bring new and increasingly complicated calibers to market virtually every year, we also should take note of other brands, many of them smaller, independently owned, or known throughout their history more for outsourcing their movements, that are taking a more incremental approach Tutima approached the challenge of building up a portfolio of in-house calibers in a substantially different way than did last week's spotlighted company, Oris, and many others Rather than building a base and adding layers of complication in subsequent movements, Tutima shot for the horological stars right out of the gate, building the first minute-repeater caliber ever to be made entirely in Germany, and using it as a template for complications of far less grandiosity.

Stripping the complex Caliber 800 down to its most basic functions - central hours and minutes and small seconds - yielded Caliber 617, the movement that made its debut in Tutima's classically elegant Patria timepiece, ensconced in a 43-mm 18k rose gold case, behind a white opaline dial with an extra-large calibrated seconds subdial at 6 o'clock In addition to the central hours and minutes and small seconds, this timepiece's asymmetrical dial hosts at the 9 o'clock position an indicator for the movement's 65-hour power reserve - an eminently useful feature in any watch with a manual-winding movement The manually wound Caliber T659 makes its debut inside the Tutima Tempostopp, a flyback chronograph that represents a contemporary and decidedly luxurious update of the iconic Fliegerchronograph, worn by German pilots in the 1940s, and its now-legendary movement, the Glashutte UROFA Caliber 59.

"The objective was first to re-introduce the legendary UROFA Caliber 59 For this we had to reverse-engineer a movement for which no tool, parts or blue prints existed Each of the 220 movement parts was reproduced individually to bring this caliber back to life.

From there, Tutima created a solid gold case and stunning dial which maintains some of the characteristics of a Fliegerchronograph but in a more elegant interpretation The result is the perfect marriage of elegance, heritage and craftsmanship." . Source