HYT Watches proudly unveils the Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue, a striking new interpretation that dresses the maison’s most technical creation in its most precious material. This distinctive timepiece pairs a warm 5N rose gold case with black DLC titanium, setting a refined precious frame around HYT’s signature fluidic blue, the tinted liquid coursing through the borosilicate capillary, the three spheres orbiting the conical tourbillon, and the blue central minutes hand sweeping across the dial.
The Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue represents a bold evolution in HYT’s hydromechanical journey, where the solar warmth of 5N gold heightens the depth and movement of the blue. Here, gold does not compete with colour, it frames it, letting the fluidic mechanics take centre stage beneath the domed sapphire crystal. This audacious pairing reflects HYT’s commitment to pushing boundaries while maintaining the technical excellence that defines the brand.
Gold as the frame, blue as the spectacle
HYT carries over the conical tourbillon that earned the HYT Conical Tourbillon Titanium Blue its acclaim and rewrites its case entirely. The architecture becomes bicolour: 5N gold paired with DLC-black titanium, the same pairing of warmth and shadow that defines HYT’s most precious references. The gold signs the crown, struck with the Maison’s H, and the side grilles and frame, which catch the light along the flanks. The titanium, coated in deep black DLC, recedes into the background, a quiet stage built for one purpose: to let the blue be seen.
Because the colour, here, belongs entirely to the fluid. It rises and retrogrades in the capillary tube marking the hour; it fills the three spheres that orbit the conical tourbillon; it traces the sweep of the central minutes hand. Around all of this, gold does not compete, it frames. The result is not a precious variation on an existing model. It is a metamorphosis: the most technical creation in HYT’s history, dressed in its most noble material.
It is both animated and sensual thanks to the dual movement effect created by the blue retrograde fluid hour markers and the turning of the conical tourbillon with its dynamic animations. The HYT Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue is a new form of life, symbolised by the central mechanism at its heart, now held within a case that pairs the permanence of gold with the technicality of titanium.
A tourbillon born of a century of daring
At the heart of this technical feat, the 701-TC caliber, a hand-wound mechanical movement beating at a frequency of 21,600 vib/h (3 Hz). The conical tourbillon is elevated as it springs to life at the very core of the mechanics, with its spring-balance inclined at 30 degrees to horizontal, the escape wheel at 15 degrees, and the pallet at 23 degrees, a bold technical achievement that takes its inspiration directly from the works of German watchmaker Walter Prendel and his inclined balance tourbillon.
The watch movement consists of 533 components, with the tourbillon cage alone comprising 159 components. Adding the dial’s 39 components and the 66 that make up the case, the entire HYT Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue totals 750 components, all meticulously checked, assembled by hand.
In his workshops in Groitzsch, a part of Saxony which is as well-known as Switzerland for the development of cutting-edge watches, Walter Prendel aimed to prove the relevance of his research, based on the theories of master watchmaker Alfred Helwig, into improving the stability and regularity of the rate of his oblique tourbillon with a spring-balance inclined at 30° to horizontal.
It was in the early 2020s that master watchmaker Eric Coudray, winner of the Prix Gaïa and familiar with the complex works of Walter Prendel, decided to continue this work to improve the tourbillon, using this oblique tourbillon as his base. Given its advances in contemporary fine watchmaking, it was only logical that HYT would decide to include a tourbillon in the design of the mechanical movement for its new watch.
Three spheres, one choreography of blue
At the very heart of the dial, where the conical tourbillon completes a clockwise revolution in 30 seconds, three spheres filled with blue liquid rotate at different speeds, easy to observe: the first completes four turns a minute, the second five turns a minute, and the third six turns a minute, clockwise, a chaotic animation that never repeats itself the same way twice within an hour.
“Gold has always promised permanence. Blue, here, is what keeps moving inside that promise – the part of the watch that never sits still. We didn’t want to colour the gold. We wanted the gold to hold something that colour could truly belong to.”
– HYT
Telling time with liquid: an age-old principle, a contemporary answer
HYT was born in 2012 from a dream of using liquid to display the time on a mechanical watch. The independent Swiss watchmaker has developed a very personal approach to the art of watchmaking, guided by the ambition to return to the very sources of timekeeping as they were first established many thousands of years ago. To do this, HYT has developed cutting-edge technology which allows it to transfer the energy developed by the watch movement to animate the fluid mechanics.
