Philippe Dufour Simplicity

An extremely rare, elegant and highly important white gold wristwatch with small seconds, certificate of origin and presentation box

Condition Report Sign Up or Login There is always a sense of excitement when a timepiece made by the great Philippe Dufour comes to the market. Especially an early example like the present number 63 cased in a rare 34mm white gold livery. Rarely has a watchmaker singlehandedly so well represented a horological genre that has gone from being reserved for the cognoscenti, to a category that is boxing in the same heavyweight league as Philippe Dufour has. Philippe Dufour exemplifies what we have collectively come to imagine as the typical Swiss watchmaker: a pipe-smoking solitary figure working in a small workshop in the Swiss Alps handmaking watches of incomparable beauty and quality infused with passion and love. Philippe Dufour is all of the above and much more. An extremely talented and passionate watchmaker, he is an ardent defender of traditional watchmaking that he considers a dying art. A true living legend, his watches are considered masterpieces that collectors jealously treasure, making them extremely difficult to obtain. The Simplicity was first presented in 2000 and was a break away from Dufour’s wonderfully complex mechanisms. With this model, he wanted to demonstrate his unrivalled finishing techniques and to prove that simple could also mean sophisticated. Each watch, like all his other creations, was to be hand-finished and assembled by the master himself. The Simplicity was originally presented in a 34 mm case and a larger 37 mm case was offered rapidly after. It was made in pink gold, white gold or platinum with a unique steel version known. Two dial types can most often be found on his timepieces; either in white lacquer or with a hand-guilloché dial, with unique versions also known. Whereas the majority of the Simplicity models ordered by clients were housed in 37mm cases with guilloché dials, Dufour continued making a small number of pieces in 34mm with the white lacquer dial. With the discontinuation of the Simplicity the world's greatest collectors can only access one on the secondary market and the present example is the perfect opportunity to own a masterpiece of independent horology.