The Hommage: 550 Components, One Day in May

On May 12, 2011, Tutima inaugurated its manufactory in Glashütte. Dieter Delecate marked the occasion by unveiling the first watch completed there: the Hommage Minute Repeater.

A minute repeater translates time into sound. Three hammers strike tuned gongs — hours, quarter-hours, minutes — through the case. Cal. 800 contains over 550 components and 42 jewels, four mounted in screwed gold chatons. Hand-wound, 65-hour power reserve, column-wheel striking mechanism. The gear train is fully mirror-polished. The balance cock is hand-engraved with relief work. The three-quarter plate is gold-plated in the Glashütte tradition.

The engineering problem was the sound. Tutima developed the gong geometry in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute. Platinum — the case material for five of the twenty-five pieces — is dense and absorbs vibration. The physical properties that make it attractive to look at make it difficult to project sound through. The Fraunhofer collaboration produced gongs tuned to compensate for the material. One reviewer described the result as "incredibly crisp, very sharp and extremely melodic."

Cal. 800 is built on the Cal. 617 hand-wound architecture that also powers the Patria line. Where Cal. 617 has 171 components, Cal. 800 adds the striking train and more than triples the part count. Both calibers share the Breguet overcoil hairspring, made in-house, and the free-sprung screw balance.

Twenty-five pieces total: twenty in rose gold, five in platinum. The platinum variant measures 43mm across and 13.4mm tall. Pricing sits between approximately €160,000 and €200,000. In 2013 the Hommage won the Couture Time Award for outstanding fine mechanics.

Delecate wanted the first watch produced at the new location to honor what he called "the Mecca of fine German watchmaking." He chose a minute repeater — the first developed in-house in Germany for a wristwatch. It was the first watch completed in the new Glashütte workshop.