Showing at WatchTime New York 2015: Moritz Grossmann Benu Power Reserve


Have you secured your ticket yet for America’s luxury watch show? WatchTime New York, taking place October 23-24 at Manhattan’s Gotham Hall, now boasts more than 20 watch brands displaying their new timepieces for 2015 (Click here for event details and to purchase tickets). Among the sponsor brands is Germany’s Moritz Grossmann, which will be showcasing its Benu Power Reserve timepiece.

Moritz Grossmann — based in the German watchmaking hub of Glashutte, where the brand’s legendary namesake founded the German School of Watchmaking in 1878 — introduced the first Benu watch in 2010. The Moritz Grossman Benu Power Reserve represents the flagship collection’s second generation, boasting several technological breakthroughs, including the model’s linear power reserve display; a newly designed oscillator (the “Grossmann balance”) designed entirely in-house; a winder with pusher and enhanced hand-setting mechanism; and a modified Glashütte stopwork with a flexible arrangement of parts.

Moritz Grossmann BENU Power Reserve - front

The watch’s three-part case has a narrow bezel framing a gray or argenté dial with a minutes scale, Arabic numerals, and sharp-tipped, shiny hands crafted in-house from stainless steel in a proprietary process. The hands are filled with a material called HyCeram that is dyed for UV stability and forms a permanent bond with the metal, enhancing the hands’ brightness and legibility against the dial. A small seconds subdial appears at 6 o’clock, and the watch’s main attraction, the bar-shaped power reserve indicator, is ensconced in the upper portion of the dial, below 12 o’clock.

Moritz Grossmann takes pride in its distinctive power-reserve function and explains its workings thus: “As was the case in Glashütte observation watches, the Benu features a compactly designed crown-wheel differential train beneath the ratchet wheel. In this train, the rotary motion that occurs when the movement is wound or the mainspring unwinds is transferred to a carrier arbor with a planetary wheel. The display segment, one part white, the other red, is positioned above the hour wheel. A spring presses the hour wheel against its collar and the display segment against the dial; this stabilises both parts without affecting their rotation. The specially designed bearing of the segment allows the power-reserve indicator to progress without affecting the movement, winder, or hour wheel. An aperture in the dial beneath the logo makes the display segment appear as a white/red bar. When the mainspring is fully wound, the bar is white. The red portion gradually appears as the spring winds down.”

Moritz Grossmann Benu Power Reserve - dial CU

The Moritz Grossmann Benu Power Reserve contains the hand-wound Caliber 100.2 movement, which features many hallmarks of traditional Glashutte watchmaking, such as the a three-quarter mainplate in untreated German silver, a hand-engraved balance cock, and Glashütte ribbing decoration, along with modern elements indicative of the brand, such as the Grossmann balance, designed to improve the adjustability of the inertia, and the modified stopwork, designed to optimize the tension of the mainspring. The watch is available in four executions: rose-gold or white-gold case with argenté dial, and white-gold or platinum case with gray dial.

To learn more about the fascinating micro-mechanical innovations in the Moritz Grossmann Benu Power Reserve — and to find out how the watch looks and feels on your own wrist, click here to reserve your spot at WatchTime New York, America’s Luxury Watch Show. Tickets are going fast!

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