WORLDTEMPUS - 3 February 2011
Roberta Naas
This year at SIHH, Greubel Forsey introduced its Invention Piece 2: paying homage to the Quadruple Tourbillon, the brand's watchmakers and inventors have pulled out all the stops by re-inventing the double tourbillon cages and placing one at 1 o'clock and another at 8 o'clock in a totally reversed form (a mirror image). This is no easy feat, but then nothing Greubel Forsey does is an easy feat.
“We only make about 100 timepieces a year,” Stephen Forsey explained during the SIHH, “because everything is handmade, hand-finished and -assembled. Everything must be perfect before it can go out the door, and that takes an amazing amount of time.”
As such, only 22 examples of Invention Piece 2 will be made: 11 in rose gold and 11 in platinum. The watch retails for approximately $750,000 in platinum and $730,000 in rose gold.
According to John Simonian, head of Greubel Forsey for the Americas, “These watches will probably be sold before they even get delivered. Every retailer who currently carries Greubel Forsey ordered the IP2, but not everyone will get it. The customer who really wants this watch may not have a choice in metal since both models will sell out.”
In addition to the extreme precision and mechanics of the Greubel Forsey timepieces in general and the IP2, in particular, Stephen Forsey reverts back to the brand's attention to detail in the creation of its timepieces.
“One of the factors that has always set us apart is our superior hand-finishing of every single piece in our watches,” he explained. “This hand-finishing is what gauges the number of pieces that we can make. If we have a skeleton watch, it is not to have a skeleton, but instead to have a movement as open as possible so that we can show the beauty of the pieces; so that the wearer can hold the watch in his hands, and look at it, and recognize the techniques that go into its making. We focus on sharp angles and extreme details.”
According to Forsey, it takes one week for the technician to set up the machines that cut and finish one piece, for instance the triangular three-dimensional component that holds the hands in place on the IP2. Then it takes another minimum of five hours of hand-finishing that single triangular middle lever before it is considered done.
“The finishing department is all about artistry. We have 16 people who have an aptitude for this work. They spend 50,000 to 60,000 hours hand-finishing each year just to complete 100 watches.”
This is a staggering number of hours when one considers the work that goes into the mechanics and technology of a Greubel Forsey watch. Collectors clamor for the precision and for the multi-level dials with enough volume to view both the finishing and complexities of the movement. The IP2 contains 594 components and takes one full year to complete. According to Forsey, it is easily the most complicated watch the brand has made to date. While the Quadruple Tourbillon was five years from idea to fruition, the IP2 took another two years to create.
Summing up the SIHH show for the young brand of only six years, Simonian said, “This was the second year Greubel Forsey exhibited at the SIHH, and the brand really bloomed. It was easily their best year.”
