Classique Tourbillon

Reference: 3357BA
Case: Yellow gold
Dial: Silvered gold, hand engraved
Era: c. 1990s to 2000s

In collection since 2025

The tourbillon Daniel Roth drew for Breguet

The story

The 3357 sat on my wishlist for over a year. I am genuinely glad I managed to get it before the end of 2025. Some watches you admire casually. Others stay quietly in your mind until timing, opportunity and conviction finally align. This was very much the latter.

The 3357 is the successor to the 3350, the model developed while Daniel Roth was directly involved in Breguet's design language. To me, the front-facing tourbillon, framed by the two wing-like engraved structures beside it, is one of the most successful tourbillon compositions ever created. Even after Roth left Breguet he carried this exact architecture into his own brand. That tells you how much the design meant to him personally.

What truly sets this watch apart is the engraving. In today's watchmaking, engraving increasingly prioritises consistency, efficiency and control. The engraving on the 3357 belongs to a different philosophy, one that values individual variation, tactile depth and the human hand. Even next to Breguet's 250th anniversary 7255, the engraving on the 3357 feels warmer and more alive. This is a watch from over twenty years ago, when every line was cut by hand, slowly and deliberately. I believe this level of time-consuming craft will only get harder to find.

Some watches do not need the spotlight. They just need a moment.

Wearing it

At 35mm in yellow gold it wears like a proper dress watch, not like a tourbillon. The movement is only a few millimetres thick, so the case sits low under a cuff. I keep it on brown leather and wind it by hand, which is part of the ritual.

The gold is not the point. Every scroll on the plate was cut by a graver, one stroke at a time, where a single slip ruins the bridge. No two of these movements are the same. That is what I look at when I turn it over, far more than the carat.

What changed

I used to think of the 3350 and the 3357 as the same watch in two generations. Owning one taught me the differences in handwork are real, and the market has noticed: the 3350 now trades well above the 3357 and posted strong auction results in 2025. I still think the 3357 is the more sensible way to own this architecture, and the engraving on mine is the reason I would choose it again.

Details with a purpose

Notes on the watch

Calibre 558T, hand wound, 18,000 vph, roughly 50 hours of power reserve, and only about 4.8mm thick.
18k yellow gold case, 35mm. One-minute tourbillon carriage at six o'clock, with the seconds read off the carriage itself.
Silvered gold dial engine-turned by hand on a rose engine. Plate and bridges hand engraved, so each movement differs slightly from the next.
Abraham-Louis Breguet patented the tourbillon in 1801. The 3350, introduced in 1988, was Breguet's first wristwatch tourbillon and among the very first serially made wristwatch tourbillons anywhere.
Daniel Roth joined Breguet under the Chaumet brothers in the 1970s and led the development of calibre 558 before leaving in the late 1980s to found his own brand.

Collector to collector