CULTURES around the globe have worshipped the heavens for thousands of years so it is quite natural that, in their quest for timepieces with additional complications, watch collectors often seek pieces that provide extra information about the moon and the stars, known as moon-phase watches.
As with so many aspects of horology, moon-phase watches are not a new phenomenon. One of the best known early examples is Abraham-Louis Breguet's No 5, an automatic perpetual calendar pocket watch with a moon-phase sub-dial, a power reserve indicator and a seconds sub-dial. He sold it in 1794.
In the years since, the popularity of watches that indicate lunar cycles has waxed and waned. They were in great demand in the 1970s, in the early days of quartz watches, when they were found in timepieces across a broad price range.
In its effort to reduce prices as it struggled to compete against the onslaught of cheap quartz products, the traditional Swiss watch-making industry began to produce watches without complications such as moon phases.
Now the wheel has turned full circle and moon-phase dials are back in demand. The difference this time is that many of the moon-phase watches on sale are high-grade mechanical timepieces, which appeal to watch enthusiasts and collectors.
Blancpain accepted in the early 1980s that it would never be able to produce a mechanical watch as cheaply as a quartz watch, coming to the conclusion that it was a price war the great mechanical watch houses were certain to lose. Many had already closed or abandoned the production of mechanical timepieces in favour of their quartz equivalents.