Jacob Arabo founded Jacob and Co. in New York in 1986 as a jeweler, not a watchmaker. The brand built its relationship with horology gradually through the 1990s and 2000s. A clientele of hip-hop artists, athletes, and celebrities drove that growth, all of them wanting something that looked like no Swiss watch they had seen before.
The Astronomia, launched in 2015, established Jacob and Co. as a genuine player in high-complication watchmaking. Its three-dimensional movement architecture remains one of the most visually dramatic displays in contemporary horology. That same year, the Palatial Flying Tourbillon Minute Repeater debuted at Baselworld. It was the brand’s first chiming watch.
It also marked Jacob & Co.’s entry into one of watchmaking’s most technically demanding categories. The 2026 anniversary edition revisits that milestone. Limited to 12 pieces at $390,000, it arrives with technical upgrades, a redesigned tourbillon cage, and a red mineral crystal dial that makes the original’s black version look almost restrained by comparison.
The Movement: What the Caliber JCCM04 Actually Does
The manually wound Caliber JCCM04 is built from 308 components and runs at 3 Hz with a 90-hour power reserve, identical in specification to the original Palatial movement but rebuilt around two significant upgrades. The first is a newly engineered silent centrifugal governor that controls the minute repeater’s striking cadence without generating the mechanical noise conventional governors produce.
A minute repeater is already among the most acoustically demanding complications in watchmaking: the quality of the sound produced by the two cathedral gongs striking the hours, quarter-hours, and minutes is inseparable from the quality of the watch itself. Removing the governor’s mechanical interference from that acoustic equation is a genuine technical contribution rather than a cosmetic one.
The second upgrade is a redesigned flying tourbillon cage at 6 o’clock. The flying tourbillon has appeared across multiple Jacob and Co. collections in various configurations, but the Palatial edition’s cage architecture has been reconsidered for this anniversary piece, with the structural components given a cleaner visual presence that allows the movement’s visible finishing to read more clearly through the dial. Hand-polished Côtes de Genève finishing across the bridges is visible through the sapphire crystal caseback, where the 18K rose gold oscillating weight and the movement’s full architecture can be inspected as thoroughly as the front of the watch.
The Dial: Red Mineral Crystal and Musical References
The red mineral crystal dial is the most immediate visual statement the anniversary edition makes, and it earns its boldness because the color serves the watch’s identity rather than contradicting it. Mineral crystal dials are a Jacob and Co. signature in the Palatial line, introduced in the original collection in blue, red, and green variants, but the transparency of the material means the dial is not an opaque surface but a window into the movement beneath. The red version creates a warm chromatic filter over the Caliber JCCM04’s architecture, changing the visual register of the movement without obscuring it. Applied 18K rose gold hour markers sit against that surface with enough contrast to maintain legibility.
The musical references embedded in the dial design connect the watch’s aesthetic logic directly to its mechanical function. A brushed 18K rose gold G clef appliqué sits at 9 o’clock, a decorative choice that has been present in the Palatial line since its introduction and that gains additional resonance in the context of a chiming watch. The skeletonized hands are shaped like metronomes, a detail specific enough to reward attention and precise enough to feel considered rather than decorative. The combination of the G clef, the metronome hands, and the red mineral crystal produces a dial that reads as a piece of visual storytelling about what the movement inside actually does.
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Why This Watch Matters for Jacob and Co.
Jacob and Co. brought several significant pieces to Watches and Wonders 2026 in Geneva. The Astronomia Revolution Four-Axis Tourbillon pushed mechanical boundaries. The Godfather II musical watch extended the brand’s cultural reach. Together they confirmed Jacob and Co.’s position across both complication categories and popular references. The Palatial Flying Tourbillon Minute Repeater anniversary edition sits apart from all of that. It does not push into new territory. It returns to the specific moment when Jacob and Co. first committed to acoustic complexity, the hardest test in haute horology.
Watchmakers argue about minute repeaters more intensely than any other complication. The reason is simple: sound cannot be manufactured or marketed away. The watch either chimes beautifully or it does not. The ear makes that judgment, not the eye. Jacob Arabo has called the Palatial minute repeater the piece he feels most personally attached to in the brand’s entire catalog. That context matters. The 12-piece anniversary edition is not a commercial exercise. It is a statement about where Jacob and Co. started and what it still knows how to do. The Palatial Flying Tourbillon Minute Repeater anniversary edition is available now at jacobandco.com for $390,000.
Featured image: Jacob and Co.
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