![]() The same was true of the rest of the watch. A wristwatch movement was a fraction of the size of the pocket watch calibres they were used to, and decorating them to the same level of quality was a challenge in itself. The Qualityīut these watchmakers that had dedicated their being to a pursuit of excellence, being forced into making luxury watches that had no grand complexity-how were they to express their differentiating talents in something so small and so basic? I imagine the reaction was similar to asking Gordon Ramsey to make you a pot noodle.įar from throwing their toys out of the pram, watchmakers like Patek Philippe embraced this new challenge to produce a level of quality scaled down to these new diminutive proportions. There’s just something about it that makes you take pause and remember that not everything has to be difficult. With the ever-increasing rush of time, solace is found in the moments taken to appreciate stillness, serenity-and the Grand Seiko SBGW231 embodies that. There comes a period in some people’s lives where, after the noise and the drama of youth, maturity dictates a simpler outlook. You won’t find a date window here if anything the centre second would be considered flair. Dauphine hands mimic the light-catching properties of those markers, with the smallest flourish allowed with the applied logo used above the Grand Seiko branding. This restraint continues into the dial, hours marked with raised trapezoidal prisms with quarters doubling up and minutes dashed in print. Where others border on pastiche, caricatures enlarged to fit modern ideals, the SBGW231 keeps a small, 37.3mm case, just 11.6mm tall. We’ve seen that benchmark evolve over time, and it has been revisited in any number of ways, watchmakers trying to recapture the essence of a time when the wristwatch was just taking hold-but very few have achieved that in quite the same way as the Grand Seiko SBGW231. Forget perpetual calendars, tourbillons and other such finery-this watch went back to basics and did the only thing it really needed too. It had a case, sized to fit comfortably on a wrist and be worn discreetly under a cuff, minimally decorated if at all it had a strap, simple, plain, unadorned, to hold it in place and it had a dial that did nothing more than tell the time. There were a number of brands revisiting the format of the pocket watch, notably Jaeger-LeCoultre with the novel Reverso, but sporting intentions aside, it was the Patek Philippe Calatrava that paved the way for wristwatch design for the next century. ![]() Small, discreet, elegant-now wearing a timepiece from your favourite watchmaker wasn’t akin to having a sign pinned to your back that said, “Rob me and leave my corpse in the gutter.” Now, hard as it might be to consider the wristwatch an innovation, back then it was like the jump from the CD Walkman to the MP3 player. On a dime, customers turned their backs on businesses built over centuries-businesses that didn’t look very long for this world.Īt least, they wouldn’t have been had they not innovated. Their business was big, flashy, complicated pocket watches that made their owners the talk of the town-wealthy customers would compete to commission the most complex-and in a post war, mid-depression world, they were as welcome as a wet cough. Back in the 1930s, the watch industry was going south.
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