Three Watches from Geneva That Stick

Day two in Geneva. Plenty of watches, plenty of repetition — and then three pieces that are still on my mind in the evening. Very different watches from very different worlds. All the better.

Grand Seiko Spring Drive U.F.A. Ushio 300 Diver

Grand Seiko is showing a diver’s watch in Geneva powered by the new calibre 9RB2. It carries the fresh U.F.A. designation — „Ultra Fine Accuracy” — which in numbers means ±20 seconds of deviation. Per year. That is remarkable. A mechanical Spring Drive watch running in the accuracy range of a good quartz movement is no toy.

Case: 43.3 × 13.3 mm, High-Intensity Titanium, unidirectional diver’s bezel with ceramic insert, 300 m water-resistant. The surfaces are rigorously Zaratsu-polished — the mirror-smooth finish Grand Seiko has made a signature — combined with satin-brushed flanks.

Dial: „Ushio” is Japanese for „tidal current”. The gradient runs from deep midnight blue at the top to a brighter turquoise-green at the bottom. It is meant to recall the currents around Japan. Applied markers and hands with strong Lume. A small red accent on the seconds hand. No date, which here is exactly the right choice.

Movement: Calibre 9RB2, Spring Drive with U.F.A. regulation. 72-hour power reserve, indicated on the back. Automatic winding. The key point: accuracy is specified at ±20 seconds per year — far beyond what mechanical watches normally achieve, made possible by the electromagnetic Tri-Synchro Regulator Seiko has refined over decades.

Bracelet: Titanium link bracelet with micro-adjustment in the clasp, plus an additional rubber strap. No quick-change system, but cleanly finished.

Price/Limitation: Limited Edition, 300 pieces worldwide. Price around CHF 15,000.

Seiko has long been a fixed point among divers. Reliable, cleanly built, worth the money — even if „affordable” is no longer quite the right word it used to be. Dials that take on water are something I have always enjoyed. The Ushio is one of the more beautiful interpretations.

One question remains: why exactly does a diver’s watch need ±20-second accuracy? Nobody measures monthly deviation underwater. Not terribly useful. But the movement can do it, so it gets shown. That is called promotion. It works, too — here it sits and we are talking about it.

Grönefeld 1944 Tanfana

The first ladies’ watch by the Grönefeld brothers. Quick context: Bart and Tim Grönefeld have been building watches in their workshop in Oldenzaal, in the east of the Netherlands, for more than fifteen years. They are third-generation watchmakers — their father before them, their grandfather before that. The Grönefelds belong to the very special independents — not because they are the loudest, but because every watch they make is thought through into the last corner. Remontoire, One Hertz, Parallax Tourbillon, Principia — those are their watches, all with their own handwriting.

Reference 1944 is the birth year of their mother Netty. The name Tanfana comes from the area around Oldenzaal: a Germanic goddess, guardian of peace and harmony, mentioned in Roman sources. Anyone who knows the family a little instantly understands why this watch had to be called exactly that, and nothing else. That is not a marketing decision, that is biography.

Case: 37.5 mm diameter, 10.5 mm thickness, 18K 5N rose gold. The case is built across multiple height levels, deliberately creating the Grönefeld play of bright and shadowed surfaces. Case and pin buckle are set with 233 brilliant-cut diamonds, totalling around 2.73 carats. Bayonet lugs, as on the larger models. Sapphire crystal front and back.

Dial: Aventurine — deep midnight blue, with the fine metallic inclusions that make the material naturally glint. The motif is a geometric „Flower of Life” from the Sacred Geometry tradition, not applied but worked into the structure of the dial. At 6 o’clock, replacing the usual seconds hand — and this is the heart of the watch — sits an animated floral disc. It rotates slowly, and the overlay of two patterns creates a moiré effect: a flower that endlessly opens and closes. Solutions like this are rare. Poetic, not kitsch — the narrow line the Grönefelds walk with ease.

Movement: Calibre G-06, automatic winding, based on a movement traceable to Andreas Strehler’s UhrTeil AG and reworked and hand-finished in the Grönefeld workshop. Free-sprung balance spring, variable-inertia balance. Nickel silver bridges, satin and polished surfaces, anglaged edges, blued screws. The familiar Grönefeld finish, where every surface is visibly hand-worked.

Strap: Alligator leather strap with matching rose gold pin buckle — also set with diamonds.

Price/Limitation: EUR 118,000. Limited, exact numbers not published.

The Grönefeld brothers are lovely people. That sounds banal, but in this industry it is almost a compliment. The watches are beautiful and technically consistent. That is enough of a reason for me why the Tanfana stays.

Hautlence Kubera Jumping Hours Series 1

This one stops me for a moment. Hautlence is one of those brands that has been building watches for years which you do not quite know how to explain — and the Kubera is the most consistent variant of all of them.

Case: Rectangular, 36 × 43.8 × 11.3 mm, stainless steel. Multi-layered construction, with stepped edges and an alternation of brushed and polished surfaces. The lugs are integrated directly into the case, which makes the proportions feel even more compact. 30 m water-resistant. Domed sapphire crystal.

Dial: Deep green lacquered, with geometric segmentation. A window at the top shows the jumping hour; below it sits an off-centre field with additional dial relief. Around the periphery runs a turquoise minute indicator — and precisely this twist is what makes the difference. No classic central hand, no retrograde, but a continuous minute display gliding along the edge of the dial.

Movement: Calibre B60. A base movement with a module developed in collaboration with Agenhor in Geneva — Agenhor is Jean-Marc Wiederrecht’s workshop, the one that makes the complicated modules for MB&F, Van Cleef, Fabergé and others. 70-hour power reserve. Automatic winding.

Strap: Calf leather strap with a folding clasp, plus an optional rubber strap. Quick-change system.

Price/Limitation: CHF 35,600. Series 1, limited run.

What surprises me here: usually I lean towards playful design, colour, form follows function. The Kubera is the opposite. Strict, minimalist, almost restrained. A mix of Bauhaus, Art Deco and early modernism. And precisely because it is so consistent, it works. More appealing to me than classic Bauhaus — the small twist with the peripheral minute hand makes the difference.

CHF 35,600 is not a bargain, but also no surprise given an Agenhor module inside such an independently designed case. The ratio is right here.

Closing

Precision, family, form. Three good reasons on a single fair day. The Grand Seiko for what is technically possible, the Grönefeld for what is personally told, the Hautlence for what is consistently shaped.

Exactly why Watches and Wonders remains genuinely enjoyable, despite all the repetition. You just have to look long enough.

Tomorrow: Masters of Horology.