Moritz Grossmann - BENU Enamel

German watchmaker Moritz Grossmann is now presenting a watch with the rare combination of a steel case and an enamel dial, the BENU Enamel.

Introduced in 2012, the BENU is characterised by the aesthetic clarity of its face, reminiscent of a Glashütte precision instrument from the 19th century.

Its name comes from ancient Egyptian mythology: Bennu (as spelled in English), the divine heron, settled into its nest one evening and was consumed by fire there. It left an egg from which another Bennu bird hatched the next morning.

The 41 mm case of the new model frames a dial whose beauty and balance, with its crisp minute scale and elegant Arabic numerals, is now further emphasised by the preciousness of the white enamelling. The scales and numerals are available in black or blue, combined with hands annealed to a brown-violet hue.

Shaped in the form of stretched rhombuses, the steel hands consist of two parts (hand and bushing), which are manually crafted, hardened and ground by Grossmann’s watchmakers. This sequence of time-consuming processes is the only way to impart threedimensionality to the hands and achieve the daintiness of the tips. The shape of the hands and their remarkable length assure precise readings of time. Brown-violet was chosen as the annealing colour – it is the darkest hue of steel obtainable with thermal hardening. As a prominent contrast, the eyes of the hands are mirror-polished.

The antireflective sapphire-crystal back reveals the hand-wound 100.1 manufacture calibre performing 18,000 semi-oscillations per hour. The curved, milled cutout of the German silver 2/3 plate, a typical Grossmann hallmark, puts the spotlight on the large screw balance and its hairspring. The three screwed gold chatons that secure the jewel bearings are eyecatching plate accents just like the white sapphire bearing jewels and the brown-violet screws that were naturally annealed over an open fire.

The BENU Enamel also features the Grossmann winder with pusher, a refined hand setting mechanism that eliminates two possible error sources: the ingress of particles into the case while the hands are being set and the unintentional alteration of the hand positions while the crown is being pushed home again.

In fact, when the user pulls the winding crown out, the winder switches to the hand setting mode and simultaneously stops the movement. The crown immediately returns to its home position but can now be turned to precisely set the hands. Once ready, the movement can be restarted by pressing the push button at 4 o’clock so avoiding the possibility to alter the positions of the hands. At the same time, the mechanism switches back to the winding mode.

The price of the Moritz Grossmann BENU Enamel is Euro 27,100. grossmann-uhren.com