Twenty of the ninety-nine Byblos watches carry Eastern Arabic numerals, and this is one of them. The edition was built in 2014 to mark the opening of Journe's tenth boutique, in Beirut, and named for the Lebanese port of Byblos, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities anywhere. The case is tantalum at 39 mm as on every Chronometre Bleu, but the dial is not: it is cut away to reveal the rose gold movement beneath, with the hours carried on a Mediterranean blue circle around the edge. Ninety-nine were built in total, and the numerals are what divide the run. It is the only Chronometre Bleu whose dial was ever opened, and both versions share the same case and movement.
This was the first time Journe opened a dial to show the movement from the front. What is revealed is the top plate of the rose gold mechanism, finished with barleycorn guilloche over circular graining, which is decoration that would normally be seen only through the back and here becomes the center of the watch. Around it the blue circle carries the hours, and the composition is meant to read as the sun of the Orient set in a Mediterranean sky. The numerals on this version are Eastern Arabic rather than Western, which is what separates twenty pieces from the other seventy-nine. Hands are ivory colored steel, as on the standard model. Opening a dial is a harder decision than it looks, because everything underneath then has to be finished as a display surface rather than as a working one. Journe treated the top plate accordingly: barleycorn guilloche across the visible area, circular graining beneath it, polished screw heads with chamfered slots, and pegs with rounded ends. None of that would have been necessary on a closed dial and all of it is standard practice on the movements of this house, which is why the watch could be built at all. The blue circle is the only conventional element on the face, and even that is not where a chapter ring normally sits.
The detail most people miss is on the movement rather than the dial. The manufacture name is engraved directly into the top plate instead of being printed or applied, and the J in Journe is replaced by the Phoenician letter yodh. That character means hand, which is a reference to the work involved, and it is also the tenth letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which is a reference to the tenth boutique. Three ideas in one substituted letter is more wordplay than this house usually attempts. Underneath, the movement is the standard Chronometre Bleu architecture in 18K rose gold, hand wound, with two mainspring barrels in parallel. Two barrels in parallel is the arrangement every Chronometre Bleu uses and it is worth a sentence, since it explains why the watch runs as steadily as it does without any additional device. A single barrel delivers more force when fully wound than when nearly down; two release together over a longer span and flatten that curve, which keeps the balance receiving something closer to constant force through the whole cycle. The watch holds about fifty-six hours off a full wind. Nothing else on it needs operating, and the Byblos changes none of that. The movement is otherwise identical to a standard example, so an owner gets the same watch to live with and a different one to look at. Setting is from the crown and there is nothing else to operate.
Ninety-nine pieces makes this a small edition and twenty makes the Eastern Arabic version considerably smaller. The watches were sold through the Beirut boutique to mark its opening, and at least one was auctioned for charity afterwards, which is how a few of them entered the public record. Journe has rarely opened a dial since and has never repeated the Phoenician logo, so the series stands alone in the catalogue rather than beginning anything. For a house whose reputation rests on restraint, the Byblos is an uncharacteristic piece of theatre, and it is generally described as such by the people who own one. Beirut was the tenth boutique and the edition marks that rather than anything about the model. Journe has opened boutiques since without producing anything comparable, which suggests the Byblos came out of the particular occasion rather than from a policy. Several of the watches have passed through charity sales in the region, which is how the edition acquired a public record disproportionate to its size. Numbering runs to ninety-nine and is recorded on the case. What survives is a small run of watches that look unlike anything else the house has made, in a case metal it uses on only one model, which is the Chronometre Bleu itself.
This suits a collector who already owns a standard Chronometre Bleu and wants the version nobody else has. It is the same watch underneath, in the same tantalum case, with a dial that does the opposite of what the model is known for. The Eastern Arabic numerals narrow the population to twenty and make the piece easy to identify and hard to find. As a limited edition the questions are numbering, papers and whether the numerals are Eastern or Western, since the two versions are frequently conflated in listings and the difference matters considerably. Papers are the way to settle it, and on an edition this small the original documentation is usually intact. The tantalum case will look close to new regardless of age, so condition questions concentrate on the dial and on the exposed movement surface, which is more vulnerable than a covered one to anything that gets past the crystal. Servicing is otherwise standard for the model, and parts are common with every other example. Nothing about the edition complicates ownership.
