Ruby Heart Dial FP Journe Tourbillon Souverain

As if a TN Tourbillon Souverain weren’t special enough, François-Paul went and made 11 of these in 2019 and 2020. Two .45mm thin pieces of ruby heart are mounted on a rhodium-brass dial here, set against a 50% grey ruthenium inner dials. Stone dials are not new for FP Journe. From Mother of Pearl to Jade, they’ve accompanied some of his most sought after works. But Ruby Heart has a dynamic that doesn’t exist elsewhere. It’s Journe going as crazy as a reserved Frenchman can.

The TN was the last horizontal Tourbillon Souverain, before the vertical architecture was introduced. FP Journe built his brand with the Tourbillon. From the first souscriptions that only Günter Blumlein took interest in at the time to this point in time, the horizontal Tourbillon and the Resonance worked together to define FP Journe’s aesthetic sensibilities to the world. The is the end of that period. The T started in 1999, in 2004 this TN generation introduced a remontoir with natural deadbeat seconds (or Remointoire d'Egalité avec Seconde Morte, French always sounds better). That got it the Aiguille d’Or at the 2004 GPHG. This is not to mention things like the T30 that don’t really fit in standard production. Like this, this is very much not standard production. It’s a romantic goodbye to an era.

The Ruby Heart isn’t really a material, but an invention—where natural shades of ruby a merged together and carved by hand to form these dial elements. This is a notoriously delicate and painful process, as dials fail more often that they succeed during manufacturing. In fact, FP Journe had planned to make 20 of these as send off. But manufacturing proved so difficult that only 11 were made in the end. FP Journe recently revisited this look with a one-off Resonance and Optimum, however that dial was only burgundy in color and not actually stone. And just for clarity, this isn’t a Ming bracelet. No, this was ordered on a platinum bracelet from FPJ, which is worth a Chronometre Bleu on the secondary market just by itself. This is one of very few Journes on this bracelet where the watch is still the star.

This Ruby TN is appearing next month at auction, which will be quite the event. Its case appears quite sharp, of course it comes with the full works. It will be quite a fun watch indeed.