Ah, German watchmaking! Glashütte, its hills, its observatory, its sleek designs...or maybe not so sleek. Yes, this is a cliché. The German sense of order, pared down and functional aesthetics, it's not so true really. Glashütte Original adds to the burden of proof, yet again, with the latest edition of the Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition. This collection has been chosen by the brand several years ago to bear their most vivid, colourful and textured dials. They look nothing like the rest of the brand's production, nor do they the rest of the dials out there.
OK, that rigor cliché has some truth to it. Glashütte Original also has white, gray, black and blue dials on offer. But not just that. For instance, we've reviewed a Seventies Chronograph Panorama Date with a gradient gray dial that looked quite fantastic, and was nothing like commonplace back then. Where did it come from? Glashütte Original's manufacture has a little sister, based in Pforzheim.
This average city smack in the middle between Stuttgart and the Rhine is in fact the actual beating heart of German watchmaking, industrially and historically. This is where Glashütte Original has chosen to establish its dial workshop. They all come from there. By the way, this is rather unusual for a Swatch Group brand, which provides every component whith their in-house manufacturing facilities in Switzerland. So there must be some mad skills there.
In 2021, said skills are applied to the green dial of this Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition. Oh boy ! They cry. Another green dial! say the curmudgeons. Ok, but not just any green though. It's very close to the one used in 2018 one a Sixties Panorama Date: vivid, minty, bright, nothing like the trendy English, military or almond greens. And not just any texture too. These dials are not finished with sun-ray or satin-brushed effects. They look like they went through a blaze. They're spotted with irregular, baroque shapes laid out in a radiating pattern. So really, this green dial looks like nothing else out there.
