A SIX-YEAR DREAM TO EXPRESS COMPLEXITY IN SIMPLICITY
Stephen Forsey, one half of the eponymous watchmaking duo of Greubel Forsey, says this year’s birth of the Signature 1 resolves the tricky question of creating a hand-wound time-only piece; one which would bear all the hallmarks of Greubel Forsey’s invariably hyper-complicated collections. The formula to this conundrum arrived from another watchmaker within the team, Didier Cretin, who proposed a movement construction based on a traditional 18,000 vibrations per hour oscillation.
The catch? None of the handful of component manufacturers would make the technical balance wheel for the Signature 1, citing great difficulty in achieving the precise finishes and accuracy demanded by this chronometer-certified movement. “So we had to master this process ourselves, with tooling and, more importantly, human investment," Forsey says. The result, after nearly four years’ of labours, is the watchmaker’s first-ever calibre which positions the escapement and balance wheel horizontally."
“We decided to have Didier co-sign this piece – thus its name – and this step will lead to collaborations with other personalities in future," Forsey says of the Signature line. High-level finishes are evident in this pioneering collection, with dense boxwood discs and a craftsman’s delicate touch used to create the thousandth of a millimetre-deep Geneva striping on the plate (versus machine striping which removes as much as two hundredth of a millimetre in the material, causing deformities in the metal). Available in limited variants of platinum, red and white gold (11 each), the Signature 1 also breaks the mould at Greubel Forsey with a first-ever offering of stainless steel, with 33 pieces which are made available at CHF155,000 each.
