Robert Downey Jr. had a particularly extravagant way of showing up for Disney’s biggest night. The actor was spotted wearing a $1.1 million Jacob & Co. Mystery Triple Axis Flying Tourbillon at the Disney Legends Awards Ceremony, where he returned as an existing Disney Legend to honor former Disney CEO Bob Iger. The ceremony served as the closing event of D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California. Downey was not receiving an award that afternoon. He had already been inducted as a Disney Legend in 2019, but his choice of wristwear still managed to attract plenty of attention.
A $1.1 million masterpiece with a Doctor Doom twist
The 44mm timepiece is made from 18k white gold and encrusted with an extraordinary number of precious stones. The caption that first drew attention to Downey’s watch described it as being factory-set with 510 white diamonds, 12 tsavorite indexes and a ruby at the hour and minute markers.
The complete gemstone count, however, is even more impressive. The watch contains approximately 542 diamonds weighing 25.11 carats, along with 12 tsavorites totaling 1.44 carats and two rubies weighing 0.23 carat. That brings the total to 556 gemstones and approximately 26.78 carats.
The color combination also makes the watch an almost perfect accessory for Downey’s forthcoming role as Doctor Doom. The vivid green tsavorites recall Doom’s cloak, while the white gold and diamonds bring to mind his metallic armor. The red rubies complement the red-tinted glasses Downey has been known to wear, while the constantly moving mechanical core has the look of a tiny fictional power source.
At the center sits an especially unusual detail. It’s a 0.40-carat Jacob-cut diamond with 288 facets. A typical round brilliant has 57 or 58 facets, making Jacob & Co.’s centerpiece dramatically more intricate. It rotates with the tourbillon assembly, continually catching light as the mechanism moves.
The mystery behind telling the time
Behind all that sparkle is Jacob & Co.’s hand-wound JCAM49 caliber, a 460-component movement running at 21,600 vibrations per hour and offering around 30 hours of power reserve. The real spectacle is its twin, central, flying triple-axis tourbillons. Two regulators sit back-to-back and rotate through three axes, rather than simply spinning on a single plane. Their rotations take 60 seconds for the first axis and 120 seconds for each of the second and third axes. A differential connects the two mechanisms and averages their output.
Even telling the time is unusual. There are no traditional hands. Instead, a diamond-set hour ring containing 107 diamonds and a ruby moves around the tourbillon, while a second ring carries 95 diamonds and another ruby. The two red stones indicate the hour and minutes against 12 green tsavorite markers, creating the illusion that they are floating around the dial. There is an unexpected gemstone footnote, as well. Tsavorite is a vivid-green grossular garnet discovered in East Africa by Scottish geologist Campbell Bridges in 1967. Tiffany & Co. later introduced it commercially and named it after the Tsavo region in 1974.
For Downey, that makes an intriguing connection to his D23 weekend. He reportedly wore a Tiffany watch on Friday before switching to this extraordinary Jacob & Co. on Sunday.
At $1.1 million, the Mystery Tourbillon is certainly an eye-catching accessory. But with its floating rubies, 288-facet centerpiece and pair of tumbling triple-axis tourbillons, it is perhaps better understood as a piece of mechanical theater that happens to tell time.
