Making a comeback this year is the Hommage collection which embodies the world of incredible mechanics for Roger Dubuis. It is also a tribute to the brand’s eponymous founder who created the first Hommage timepiece in 1995. As classical as a Roger Dubuis watch can possibly be, it is characterised by a round case with a smooth concave bezel and robust yet slender curved lugs, but naturally, the innovative spirit of the master watchmaker is what distinguishes the Hommage from the others.

The double flying tourbillon has long been Roger Dubuis’s signature complication and a new rendition had been made especially for the Hommage Double Flying Tourbillon with hand-made guilloché. As its name implies, the watch features hand-made guilloché, and where guilloché is ordinarily found on dials (occasionally cases and bezels), here it is applied directly on the movement’s main plate. Indeed, in place of a conventional dial, the movement was used as the backdrop for the hour numerals and hands.

Applying guilloché on the main plate, however, isn’t as straightforward as doing so on a dial because a dial is flat and uniformly thin on all planes but a main plate has been bored with holes and recesses to accommodate the gear wheels and screws during the assembly stage. Thus, the engraver had to control the guillochage extremely well in order not to remove more material than is necessary. Removing too much material would compromise the movement’s overall rigidity while removing too little would yield a less than ideal aesthetic effect.

But to intensify the already challenging task of guilloché on a main plate, the manufacture pushed the limits even further by etching each line no fewer than four times where it would have ordinarily been only two. The motivation behind this was to achieve deeper grooves for a more pronounced ribbing effect. In addition, Roger Dubuis achieved the ultra-brilliant gleam by retaining the polished surfaces instead of grinding them down in a process called crémage. Lastly, the usual method of applying hour numerals couldn’t be used because that would almost definitely mar the painstakingly engraved surfaces, so a novel solution was devised. Tiny ‘feet’ were soldered onto the numerals, tiny holes bored through the main plate, and those tiny ‘feet’ were fitted into those tiny holes. Voila!

Variations of the Hommage Double Flying Tourbillon with hand-made guilloché include white gold and pink gold with a rhodium-plated movement, as well as a super luxe full pink gold model (with pink gold movement Calibre RD102) limited to 88 pieces. For even greater exclusivity, a 28-piece limited boutique edition with baguette-cut diamonds set into the bezel and on the buckle (price unavailable).