Luxury Gadgets

FG ONE - Small complications opening the Basel 2006

March 29th, 2006

As soon as a mechanical watch offers more than the hour, the minute and the second, it is included theoretically in the category of the watches to complications, because any additional mechanism is regarded as a complication. Without wanting to exploit the words, it should well be said that this concept evokes the repetition minute rather that the simple addition of the date to standard posting. In an intuitive way and without formalizing it, the clock making world and the amateurs make the distinction between the large ones and the small complications, placing the great ringing at the top and the simple day of the month at the ground floor.

The posting of the date goes up however very high in the hierarchy when it is one perpetual day of the month, this complex mechanism which will require a correction only in year 2100. The very complicated watches cumulate several devices of high flight, ballasted of astronomical indications. Sometimes taking forms of club-sandwich, these stratospheric make dream, but remain out of reach the common run of people. Fortunately, there are the small complications which can be useful and much less expensive: days of the week, time zones, the indicator of the reserve of walk, the stop watch. They can be ludic also, with for first merit animating the dial. The clock and watch makers enjoy to associate them. The model which lance this year in Basel de Grisogono illustrates perfectly this step. What from the start jumps to the eyes, it is the strong design of this FG ONE, with its rectangular bent case, its vertical grooves and its two dials. Do not seek the crown of reassembly and setting per hour of the two spindles: it is dissimulated under the bracelet, at midday. The small useful complication, one included/understood it, is the second spindle which posts in the counter smile of the principal dial, to 6 h. Its posting is known as trailing or progressive in opposition to that of the hour of the first spindle, at midday, which is one hour jumping. The retrograde minute is given in a vast arc of 230 degrees swept by a dauphine needle. In the same register of visual animation, a second dial in half-moon offers one second retrograde.

Entry Filed under: 2006 Collection