Greubel Forsey, a brand known for its ambitious, innovative multi-tourbillon watches, introduced its own singular take on the classic world-time watch in 2011. A new execution of the succinctly named Greubel Forsey GMT, with a blackened titanium case, debuted this week at SIHH 2015.
The case of the Greubel Forsey GMT Black is made of titanium and treated with vacuum-deposited ADLC (amorphous diamond-like carbon), which gives the timepiece not only its sleek, deep black look but also a surface hardness substantially harder than that of natural titanium. A black treatment is also applied to the mainplate and bridges of the movement, in-house Caliber GF05, making for a more restrained color palette intended to bring out the contrast of the textures and hand-finishes on various parts of the movement.
Like its predecessors in gold and platinum cases, the Greubel Forsey GMT Black has a 24-second tourbillon with 25-degree inclination (tourbillons are standard in Greubel Forsey watches), along with a tiny, photorealistic globe, made of titanium, which makes one counterclockwise rotation every 24 hours — mimicking the planet’s actual rotation. (The globe alone took Greubel Forsey 18 months to develop in order to achieve its desired visual effect.)
Greubel Forsey describes its GMT model as “a portable time map.” All 24 of the major global time zones can be viewed in real time from the perspective of the North Pole, the point where they converge. While the Northern Hemisphere is visible on the dial side of the watch, the Southern Hemisphere can be seen through a lateral window in the side of the case. The South Pole, the anchor point of the three-dimensional globe, isn’t visible and instead houses the “flying pivot” system on which the globe spins. The dial is designed so that all of the various displays and indicators appear to be floating in space around the globe.
The globe protrudes from a large aperture at 8 o’clock, and the tourbillon cage is located at 5 o’clock. The main time and power-reserve indicators are arranged in a “cascading” arrangement on the upper right side of the dial. The large hours-and-minutes subdial is at 1 o’clock; overlapping it are the small seconds subdial at 2 o’clock and a semicircular power-reserve display at 3 o’clock. The subdial indicating the second time zone is at 10 o’clock. On the back of the watch, a rotating disk with the names of 24 world cities displays universal time for all 24 time zones, with the lighter-colored cartouches indicating summer or daylight savings times for the zones that use them.
The movement in the Greubel Forsey GMT is made up of 443 parts (87 parts for the tourbillon alone) and has two barrels providing a 72-hour power reserve. The case is “medium-sized,” by Greubel Forsey standards — 43.5 mm in diameter and 16.14 mm thick — because the watchmakers were able to keep the diameter of this very complicated movement to a relatively small 36.4 mm. The watch comes on a layered black rubber strap with a folding clasp. The Greubel Forsey GMT Black will be limited to just 22 pieces worldwide and priced at — wait for it — $565,000.
At SIHH in Geneva this week, I had the opportunity to see the Greubel Forsey GMT Black up close and personal. Below are shots I snapped of the front and back of the watch.
