It’s official: ZENITH has been reinventing the art of horlogerie for 160 years.

From day one, the watchmaking maison's visionary founder, Georges Favre-Jacot, bucked the status quo by rejecting the ubiquitous établissage model – the system in the local Jura area at the time, whereby numerous specialised artisans worked on different parts of each timepiece before final assembly. Favre-Jacot instead consolidated both design and production in his own atelier, and in doing so, he united his manufacture under one roof and one vision: to craft the perfect watch.

Since the maison’s foundation in 1865, ZENITH has been forging its own path with innovative technologies while capturing the spirit of the current era in its creations. Now, the legendary watchmakers are celebrating the maison’s 160th anniversary by presenting limited editions of the brand’s most iconic models, each made of ceramic and issued in a rich blue shade developed especially for the occasion to symbolise the bright, starlit sky that inspired the company name all those years ago.

The flurry of special releases began with the PILOT Big Date Flyback, followed by the DEFY Skyline Chronograph, and it concludes with the ZENITH CHRONOMASTER Sport – an emblem of sporty-chic high-frequency timekeeping. This striking limited-edition 41mm chronograph turns heads with its lacquer-finished dial in azure blue, featuring signature Zenith 3-6-9 tricolour overlapping counters, as well as red-tipped chronograph hands and luminescent hour, minute and second hands. The alternating brushed and polished surfaces of the case provide the perfect frame for such a show-stopping face.

Limited to 160 units each, the beating heart of each CHRONOMASTER Sport is the high-frequency chronograph El Primero 3600, a remarkably precise movement that represents 56 years of painstaking refinement. As ZENITH weathered the quartz crisis in the 1970s, company watchmaker Charles Vermot had the foresight to stow away the intricate tools required to build El Primero for better times. Thanks to him, the maison subsequently revived El Primero and continued honing it to become the modern movement in use today – an intricate marvel that, operating at 36,000 vibrations per hour, delivers 1/10th-of-a-second chronograph readings on its bezel. The exquisite architecture can be seen through the sapphire caseback, including a special “160th Anniversary” openworked oscillating weight.

As with the PILOT Big Date Flyback and DEFY Skyline Chronograph, the CHRONOMASTER Sport can be purchased individually or as a set in a specially created anniversary box – but that’s not all the maison has in store for its anniversary year. The box can also include the GFJ, another 160-unit limited edition designed as part of the year’s celebrations. Named from the initials of its founder, the model brings back another iconic movement and recounts yet another chapter in ZENITH’s quest for perfection, initiated by Georges Favre-Jacot and upheld for 160 years.