What is a pantograph? The pantograph is an “instrument for the mechanical copying of a plan on the same or an enlarged or reduced scale” (OED), a draughtsman’s instrument with articulated arms to make enlargements or reductions of a model. This definition helps us to understand the unusual shape of the hands at the centre of the Ovale Pantographe by Parmigiani.

Based in Fleurier, the brand has taken inspiration from an oval pocket watch dating from 1780, with a movement covered in counter-relief engravings and depicting acanthus leaves. The guilloché cover, adorned with indigo blue and set with small pearls, hides a white face crossed by hands formed by a kind of flexible lattice work. Connected to the movement is a system of sensors inside a device called a cam that controls the hands, extending or retracting them. Parmigiani has taken up this ingenious system and adapted it to its Ovale Pantographe model replcia, while taking into account the additional constraints involved in a contemporary wrist watch when compared with an 18^th century pocket watch.

With an oval silhouette, the Ovale Pantograph replica case is 45mm long, 37.3mm wide and 12.5mm thick. It is available in two gold colours – pink or white – and like all the Parmigiani classic collection features long, delicately prominent and angular lugs. The oval-shaped setting houses a manual winding movement in the form of a gold barrel: the PF111 calibre. Running at a frequency of 21 600 vph (3Hz) and providing a power reserve of 192 hours (8 days), it drives the hour, date and power reserve functions.

On the silver opaline fake watch face, decorated with a guilloche barleycorn pattern, are two hands equipped with a black “pantograph” body and placed at the centre, showing the hours and minutes. The date is shown in a panoramic window opening onto three dates, at 6 o’clock, while the power reserve is set at 12 o’clock.