X-Ray Vision of Ulysse Nardin

The Skeleton X, a new Manufacture movement that lays bare its audacious technology in an exquisite exhibition of fine watchmaking’s most challenging technique.  Inner beauty re-vealed, not concealed: this openworked wonder takes skeletonization to the X-level. Bold and powerful, it is an X-ray interpretation of the future of watchmaking design, where we see everything, including the very architecture and functioning of time. If you’ve got it, flaunt it. The Skeleton X leaves nothing to the imagination.

More than a means, eXploring has become Ulysse Nardin’s motivation. The X-factor is the answer: X like an adventure, X like our deepest desires, X for the unknown, X for what’s forbidden, bold and exciting. Skeleton X is the perfect showcase of this new X-ray vision of watchmaking. Blurring the frontiers between our inner and the outer worlds, X-rays allow us to connect with the invisible, with the hidden. To see through things, to explore the in-betweens of the reality, to transgress the rules of the material world. The new SKELETON X plays off the transparency of its powerful movement by intricately cutting away as much material as possible, without jeopardizing tolerances or shock resistance, to reveal the stunning beauty of the three-dimensional heart beating inside.

The Skeleton X case, reshaped and very small, a mere 42mm, is perfectly on-trend: more angular, more masculine, less round. Its shape-within-shape-within-shape geometry – an X formed by four of the indexes is framed in a rectangle, in turn inside a circle – delights the eye. Inside and clearly visible beats one of the star innovations of the watch’s antecedent, the FREAK VISION: a super-light balance wheel in silicium, extra-wide, with nickel flyweights and stabilizing micro-blades. The new Manufacture movement, the UN-371 caliber, is based on the UN-171 movement, but completely redesigned. The 96-hour power reserve can be read through the back by means of windows, like those in the barrel. The Skeleton X eXists in four different satin-finish versions: satin-finish titanium blue, satin-finish titanium black, satin-finish rose gold or matte-finish Carbonium Gold.

This skeletonized watch par excellence is priced very competitively with a start price version at 17’500 USD. Painstakingly cut and exposed, elaborately finished, hand-polished to a shimmering gleam, it bespeaks the artisan’s touch, and watchmaker’s experience and savoir-faire. Nothing can hide, inside becomes outside, the boundaries blur, as the invisible processes of time are marvelously revealed to the naked eye. Skeleton X Carbonium Gold: from the world of aeronautic fuselage to Haute Horlogerie.

The most spectacular iteration of the Skeleton X collection is undoubtedly the Carbonium Gold version. The aeronautic-grade Carbonium ® is a new, super-light and sustainable material used in the production of the latest-generation airplanes’ fuselage and wings. In short, the most vital and essential components in to-day’s modern airplanes. The production of Carbonium has 40% less environmental impact than other car-bon composites as it uses offcuts from aeronautical pieces. With complex process requiring high pressures and temperatures, Carbonium  is a high-performance material that brings out the core beauty of the organ-ic pattern created by the 7µm diameter carbon fibers. Carbonium Gold is a “fusion” of carbon and gold, giv-ing to the Skeleton X watch case shimmery and flowing black and gold waves.

The use of a material like Carbonium Gold comes as a clear reminder that we dare make a difference. Constructed from next-generation carbon composites – among the most robust and resilient materials ever devised by science – it is as audaciously disruptive as it is technically and technologically transcendent.

Ulysse Nardin is the first to use this neXt-generation material in a watch. Its resistance-to-lightness ratio is unparalleled, and its stunning marbling effect never repeats, making each watch case absolutely unique.