For 2015, Graham watches releases a new “Geo.Graham” watch which is part of their higher-end collection of classic timepieces. We first saw Geo.Graham watches back in 2012 with the release of Geo.Graham The Moon watch. These watches are more directly inspired by the classic work of watchmaker George Graham, whom the company is based on – even though he was British and Graham today is Swiss. The simply named Geo.Graham Tourbillon is a refined dress watch with a clear luxury position, but not at all pretentious. Of course, that should be tempered with the fact that tourbillons are like the chrome-plating of the luxury watch world – they add visual excitement and technical enhancements, but don’t really add to a timepiece’s ability to accurately tell the time. Nevertheless, in a dress watch like this, it is hard to say no to a tourbillon when it looks this cool.
Time-only tourbillon watches with the hours and minutes and a 60-second tourbillon as the seconds indicator are a sort of guilty pleasure for me. When I find one that is visually attractive, I try to think of reasons to wear it, even though I don’t normally do dress watches. At 40mm wide, the Geo.Graham Tourbillon wears modestly in its 18k pink gold case. It also happens to be quite thin at 9.85mm thick. Graham has provided some images of historical George Graham pocket watches that are meant to help you understand the visual inspiration Graham used when designing the Geo.Graham Tourbillon.
I quite like the dial which is classic but just a little bit different, as it hearkens back to very old timepieces. Like one of George Graham’s original pocket watches, the dial of the Geo.Graham Tourbillon has an inner scale of Roman numeral hour markers and an hour scale of Arabic numeral minute markers. The traditional looking tourbillon has a flat bridge and offers a view straight through the back of the watch.
The movement in the Geo.Graham Tourbillon isn’t produced by Graham, but is produced exclusively for them. They call it the caliber G1796 and in addition to the time and tourbillon it has an automatic micro-rotor. The movement operates at 3Hz (21,600 bph) and has a power reserve of 72 hours (three days). While we don’t yet have images of the rear of the Geo.Graham Tourbillon case, Graham tells us that there is a special “slot for the oscillating weight” on the rear of the watch where micro-rotor is located. The micro-rotor is produced from gold, and is said to be engraved with arabesque decoration (inspired by the decor on original George Graham watches).
Water resistant to 50 meters and matched to a hand-sewn brown alligator strap, the Geo.Graham Tourbillon feels lovely and simple in a nice high-end package that anyone with conservative taste can stand behind. I won’t lie that the market for dressy tourbillon watches isn’t competitive – because it certainly is. Customers thinking about the Geo.Graham Tourbillon will have a lot of options, but it is nice to see Graham extend itself into this territory more, as the brand is mostly known for their sport watches such as the Chronofighter (review here).
Graham will produce 100 pieces of this limited edition ref. 2GGCP.W01A Geo.Graham Tourbillon. Price is $80,420. graham1695.com
