A $1.6-Million Grande Sonnerie Is Among Bulgari’s 2022 Timepiece Lineup, All Created For Women

Bulgari’s new lineup of ladies’ watches, introduced on Monday as part of LVMH Watch Week, are a demonstration of how devoted this brand is to women’s watches – not just for seasoned collectors but for fans of essential day-to-evening wear. Bulgari’s mastery of a segment that not every luxury brand has been able to crack stems from its roots as a jeweler combined with its proven commitment to the application of high mechanical watchmaking to ladies’ watches. The most spectacular example of this is the one-off Octo Roma Emerald Grande Sonnerie. It’s fitted with a grande sonnerie, a four-gong mechanism that sounds the hours, quarters and minutes using a Westminster chime, which reproduces the historic Westminster carillon of Big Ben, at the British parliament building in London.

Only a handful of Swiss watchmakers is capable of producing a grande sonnerie mechanism, and the automatic BVL 703 is Bulgari’s most complex timepiece to date. It has a tourbillon regulator and a separate power reserve indicator for the striking mechanism: 24 hours in grande sonnerie mode, and 28 hours in petite sonnerie mode. One indicator on the dial is for the time, and the other is for the chime. The 732-component movement is assembled over nine months by one master watchmaker. Nearly overshadowing the impressive function of the watch are the 446 baguette-cut Zambian emeralds on the bezel and the 30 carats of diamonds everywhere else. The tapered baguette gems on the dial are custom cut to create a sunray pattern radiating from the center of the dial, a technique that is harder than it looks, and the emeralds on the bezel are invisibly set, creating a seamless expanse of green. Even the crown and chime activator on the case sides are gem set. At 44mm, this is a large watch for a woman’s wrist, but if just think of it as a big bracelet. It’s a unique piece, valued at $1,555,000

On the (slightly) more accessible side is the new Serpenti Misteriosi Piccolissimo (Italian for really small), a scaled down version of the flagship Serpenti wrap-around-the-wrist bracelet watch with the serpent head hiding a watch dial and movement. Normally in a small ladies watch, a quartz movement is used, but at this level, Bulgari wanted to equip the watch with a prestigious mechanical movement. It thus debuts the new manual wound BVl100 caliber, which is 12.30 mm in diameter and 2.50 mm thick, making it one of the smallest in the world, a feat that is not surprising considering Bulgari’s status as the maker of the word’s thinnest movements, holding seven world records.

There are four new Serpenti Secret watches in total, all of which contain the new Piccolissimo movement. They pay tribute to the 80^th anniversary of the first Bulgari secret watch. Prices of the four new models range from $166,000 to $274,000.

Finally, in the category of robust-yet-ravishing day-to-evening watches, are two new Lvcea Intarsio iterations, which are designed to “translate, retransmit and enhance the characteristic luminescence of the distinctive Roman sky in its blue and pink pearlescence.” Lvcea (a Roman spelling of the word lucea, Italian for light), pays homage to the sundials of ancient Rome that captured light to signal the passage of time.

The new ones are gussied up with pink mother-of-pearl or aventurine in a way that makes them reflect even more light. The dials are assembled using a marquetry technique in a pattern called intarsio that involves assembling 37 mother-of-pearl and blue aventurine micro-elements that are cut and then faceted by hand. They are set into the dial according to a precise and regular geometry to form a three-dimensional, pleated-like surface. There are two sizes, either 28mm or 33mm, in steel cases, with either a half a carat of diamonds on the lugs or 1.4 carats set into the bezel, with diamond markers. Prices range from a reasonable $5,000 to $10,000.