Jewelry Brand de Grisogono Debuts Line of Luxury Wristwatches

July 6, 2010 by admin
Filed under Featured Watches, Timepieces, de Grisogono

de Grisogono Otturatore Wristwatch

Technically Extraordinary de Grisogono Timepieces

Jewelry manufacturers turning an eye to watchmaking are not often taken seriously by horological fans. When jewelry brand de Grisogono debuted in the watch industry barely eight years ago, the company was confronted with all sorts of prejudice. The critics fell silent, however, when it became clear that owner Fawaz Gruosi wasn’t just going to make jeweled watches with quartz movements, but was looking to expand his portfolio with solid mechanical watches.

In the same way that he only produces jewelry of the highest quality using top-of-the-line gemstones, it is a basic requirement for Gruosi’s watches not only to be technically extraordinary but to have a design and quality able to stand up to even the strictest tests the field’s technical professionals can dish out.

de Grisogono Rose Gold Meccanico Wristwatch

It should come as no great surprise that the greater share of de Grisogono’s 2007 turnover of 135 million Swiss francs—a number that is increasing by an average of 28 percent a year—is generated mostly by unique pieces of premium jewelry. The sale of wristwatches accounts for about 47 percent of overall turnover, 70 percent of which still comprises elegant, jeweled ladies’ watches. The percentage of timepieces is steadily increasing, with the emphasis shifting more and more toward first-class mechanics with unusual features.

de Grisogono 15th Anniversary Watches

To celebrate the company’s fifteenth anniversary, de Grisogono presented two watches for which there is no historical precedent—something that doesn’t happen all that often these three tiny multi-surfaced segments—arranged both horizontally and vertically and rotating along their longitudinal axes—that form the digital time display in rose gold or neon green, depending on the metal of the case. Each of the two opposing surfaces in the display mechanism is colored; the other two are black and become invisible against the background of the movement, which in a de Grisogono is typically coated with a dark color. The changing of the time display occurs with a lightning-fast ninety-degree turn of one or more of the segments.

The astonishing automatic Otturatore model, on the other hand, is based on a rotating dial—or, to be more precise, on a rotating center of the dial. Utilizing a highly complex mechanism comprising more than one hundred individual components assembled in modular fashion on the movement, the dial can be turned in one sudden movement ninety degrees in either direction. By pressing a prominent button on the right side of the case at the 2 o’clock position, the dial window allows a view of the date display at 3 o’clock, a power reserve display at 6 o’clock, subsidiary seconds at 9 o’clock, and finally a very original moon phase indication at 12 o’clock.