Grandeur have steadily built a reputation for producing watches that punch well above their price bracket in terms of innovation and performance. The Lumillion, a lumed tourbillon for less than 2k and the asymmetrical, crazy hours Strange really put them on the map last year. Now they’ve launched a new collection with a patented, world-first display, the Grandeur Monocle.
The display in question is what they are calling the ‘Jump Flap Hour’, located on the arching window from 10 to 2 o’clock at the top of the dial. It’s essentially a sort of stylised retrograde display with a moving scale. On a normal retrograde display, such as the retrograde minutes that sit below the Jump Flap Hour, there is a static, linear scale and when the hand reaches the end it jumps back to the start.
For the Jump Flap Hour, the scale itself is on a rotating disc and the hand, which here takes the form of the titular monocle ring, tracks along with the current hour before jumping back to the next one. It’s difficult to describe on paper but very intuitive when you see it in motion. It’s interesting because it bears similarities to many other styles of time display without quite being the same as any of them.
As mentioned already it’s not quite a retrograde because the scale is moving and isn’t linear though it has that flick-back hand motion that’s the same. The rotating disc is similar to a wandering hours display but the position of the current hour doesn’t relate to the progress of minutes. There’s also an element of jump hours, because if you focus solely on what you can see in the ring of the monocle, it is an instant change of the hour at the end of each hour, but it’s the hand and not the hour disc that is moving to achieve this. This is what makes it a world-first display and worthy of a patent because while it feels familiar, it is new.
There’s also the mechanically interesting side of things because the Grandeur Monocle requires a lot of precision to have the monocle hand be synchronised with the rotation of the hour disc. From an outside perspective it appears easy for the high energy jumping motion of the hand and the constant rotation of the hours to become unaligned and yet the watch avoids this. The movement in control is the Hangzhou calibre 5000Awith a module for the Jump Flap Hour. It has a 42-hour power reserve. It’s also been fitted with the world’s first meteorite micro-rotor.
Meteorite is also found elsewhere on the watch’s design. The hour disc has a meteorite base coloured either purple, dark grey, gold or blue – called Nox Violetta, Noctis, Aureum and Azuris respectively. The caseband around the edge of the 42mm titanium case is also a meteorite ring coloured the same as the Jump Flap Hour display on each of the four models. It reminds me a little of the Chronoswiss Delphis with the way it adds a colourful, textural element to the watch, though meteorite is significantly more accessible (depending on where you source it) than a Metiers d’Art flinque enamel.
The Grandeur Monocle is priced at £2,418, which feels appropriate given the patented mechanism and meteorite decoration. It’s also a limited edition with the purple, dark grey and blue versions limited to 100 pieces each and the gold slightly more exclusive at just 35. Innovation at this price point is always exciting.
Price and Specs:
More details at Grandeur.
