Basel 2008 Report: De Grisogono
By: Marcus Hanke (registered) Saturday, April 19th, 2008Basel 2008 Report: De Grisogono
Text and pictures: Timm Delfs
Text and pictures: Timm Delfs
This year was Fawaz Gruosi’s great year for celebration. In February the strong personality celebrated the 15th birthday of his young enterprise that is responsible for having initiated trends like black diamonds or stingray bracelets. He probably also celebrated the fact that last year he had bought back the rest of the shares from the Scheufele family, a fact that he underlined during Baselworld by inaugurating his own proper booth in hall 1.1.
Gruosi not only excels in jewelry design, he has good watchmaking ideas too, as one was able to discover at the booth. A good example of his ingenuity is the “Otturatore”, a rectangular watch with two immense pushpieces left and right of the crown. They do not operate a chronograph mechanism as one might think at first sight, no, they simply turn the inner round part of the dial by 90 degrees, either clockwise or anticlockwise. What for?, is what you might ask. The dial has a window that in each position displays only one of four different additional functions like power reserve, small seconds, moonphase or date. The fact that all four are not visible at the same time gives the watch a very clean and sober look. Additionally, every time one gives the dial a twist, it looks like a different watch.
The second rather astonishing timepiece is the “Meccanico”, a monster that features an analogue and a digital display for two separate timezones. The true genius lies in the digital display that, unlike others, doesn’t simply function with revolving discs. It is in fact conceived with an electronic LCD display in mind. Each of the digits (except for the tens of the hours) is made up of 7 linear elements just like on the display of a pocket calculator, each element being able to change its status from a bright colour to black. This is achieved with tiny rollers whose round surface is divided into four long strips alternating from black to, say, green. An intricate system of gears and cams changes the positions of the sticks so that only those that are needed make a turn of 90 degrees to expose their other surface. A special mechanical accumulator stores enough energy to make this happen at intervals of one minute. Pushpieces at either side of the voluminous watchcase can be used to quickly adjust the digital display.
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