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Parmigiani Fleurier has revisited the aesthetics of its flagship model, the Toric Chronomètre, introducing an eye-catching dial decorated to evoke the spiral pattern of a pine cone.
Its concentric pattern evokes the arrangement of the scales on a pine cone – one of the innumerable examples of the Golden Ratio seen in the natural world.
‘The decoration is so captivating because it is based on the Golden Ratio. Within it, you see Fibonacci’s spirals, reproducing a harmony that is everywhere in nature’. This is how Michel Parmigiani describes the hand-guilloché dial of the new Toric Chronomètre.
Hand guilloché is an artisanal technique, of which few manufactures have such a fine mastery, in which the material is engraved to produce a repeating decorative pattern.
At 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock respectively, the elliptical Parmigiani Fleurier logo and the word Chronomètre used by COSC (Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute) stand out from the dial’s decoration.
The javelin-shaped hands are semi-open worked, making them even more discreet to complement the subtle minute track around the circumference and the finely propor-tioned Arabic numerals.
The Toric’s aesthetic impact and unique character come from its bezel, which features a hand-knurled design. Since the Toric was created in 1997, each piece has passed through the expert hands of the same craftsman in Le Noirmont (Jura), who has produced every one of the Toric bezels.
Knurling is a rare and distinctive art; it consists of manipulating the material with a wheel that leaves the imprint of its notches in the metal. This work requires the craftsman to be both delicate and firm.
Before starting, he must remain composed, as even a single imperfection will mean starting again from the beginning. Each knurling design is unique, just like each Toric.
The red gold case houses the COSC-certified PF441 proprietary calibre, which measures the passage of time in its most elemental form: hours, minutes, seconds and date. All of the components have been meticulously-decorated to Haute Horlogerie standards.
