A Grand Seiko Elegance Collection SBGW264, In Rose Gold

It is close to the end of the year, and I thought it fitting to end with something that in its aesthetics is somewhat holiday-adjacent, but which is so beautiful that it knows no season. The SBGW264 was originally released in 2020, in the Elegance collection, for the 60th anniversary of Grand Seiko (the first Grand Seiko watch was released in 1960) The SBGW264 is one heck of a piece of work – 39mm in diameter, 11.6mm thick, with a hand wound Grand Seiko in-house caliber 9S64, running at 28,800 vph, in 24 jewels. The red(ish) case and green dial evoke the holidays this time of year but as we’ll see, the inspiration is from spring and summer foliage on the mountains in whose shadow Grand Seiko watches are made.

The case is simply and perfectly finished; this particular design is not in the least overtly ostentatious, but it has on anything closer than a cursory glance, an excellence in restrained good taste, and in the careful treatment of different distinct surfaces, to which many other brands at this price point can only aspire. Grand Seiko has a reputation for doing simple things well, and the clear uncluttered case design, which eschews the angularity of some of the more extroverted watches in the GS catalog, is one of the best demonstrations I have seen in a long time of why Grand Seiko has the reputation it does.

I think the quality of the case alone would almost be enough to close the deal, but of course, GS is as famous if not more so, for the quality of its dials, hands, and dial furniture and SBGW264 is as in every other respect, a wonderful example of why this is so.

The dial is a deep fir-tree green, which is by design as Grand Seiko says it was inspired by the foliage of silver birch trees in Shizukuichi, which is a small town near the city of Morioka, in northern Japan, where Grand Seiko’s factory is located. The dial pattern is crisp and clear, but unobtrusive, but you realize on closer inspection just how precisely it’s been made. The cross-hatched pattern shrinks radially as you get closer to the center of the dial, but there is no loss of clarity or definition. The applied hour markers have mirror polished facets, with very fine longitudinal grooves on the upper facet. This is an example of Grand Seiko’s attention to detail – the lateral facets are all designed to be highly reflective but also  are angled in such a way as to avoid reflecting light directly into the viewer’s eyes. The semi-matte effect of the striping on the upper surface, is in slight but definite contrast to the other, mirror polished facets, which is both pleasant aesthetically, and beneficial practically.

The same is true of the perfectly finished hands. Like the dial markers, they are polished on their faceted flanks, but finished with a very fine longitudinal brushing on the upper surface itself. As with the dial markers, this is an aid to legibility, but it also gives an effect of depth, and thanks to both the finishing of the hands and markers, and the spiraling pattern on the dial, there is a definite three dimensionality overall. The small seconds hand and minute hand are both gently radiused at their tips, and the seconds hand is finished in gentle, rounded curves, which contrast with the sharper geometry of the hour and minute hands, and of the dial markers as well.

Grand Seiko has announced a number of innovations in the last half dozen years, including a new escapement, and newer, thinner versions of some of its automatic Grand Seiko mechanical and Spring Drive movements. However, there is a reassuring, sturdy charm to the hand wound caliber 9S64. The caliber 9S64 is one of the great workhorse hand wound movements of the 2000s; it was introduced by Grand Seiko in 2011, as the 72 hour power reserve update to the preceding 9S series of movements; these, when 9S was introduced in 1998, were the first new mechanical Grand Seiko movements in 20 years.

The movement is industrially finished, but with a level of precision not often seen in series produced industrial watchmaking. The movement overall is manufactured with all the exactness you could hope for and everything you see (and a lot of things you don’t) is made in-house by Grand Seiko, including components which are almost always source from outside suppliers. This includes the balance, balance spring, LIGA fabricated skeletonized escape wheel, the mainspring, all of the movement and escapement jewels and even the lubricants. The click on the crown wheel is a simple blade spring, but it is a pragmatic and appropriate choice for the watch and the movement, and you’ll notice that it rides on a large movement jewel, to prevent it from rubbing against the mainplate when the watch is wound. This is a thoughtful detail intended to improve the performance of the movement, by reducing friction, but also to improve longevity.

The matching rose gold pin buckle is, as you would expect, unobtrusively but excellently finished. Its gentle curves offer comfort to the fingers and wrist, with its brushed and polished surfaces reflecting the fineness of the finish of the movement.

In short, SBGW264 is about as good as a simple, no-date, daily wear hand wound watch can get, at least if you exclude watches with hand finished movements from small batch independent watchmakers, which will cost you something around an order of magnitude more to own and which may feel too precious, too much of an investment, to wear every day (albeit I am sure that there are some happy Roger Smith, Laurent Ferrier, Rexhep Rexhepi, or Philippe Dufour clients out there who do wear their watches every day). It is confident in its elegance, absolutely dripping with refinement, and completely devoid of any striving for effect, much less accidental or poorly thought out excess. It’s as quintessential a hand-wound watch as I have ever seen, and a fitting reminder, as the end of the year approaches, of the pleasures of simplicity and, even more importantly, the value of integrity for its own sake.

See it here