Greubel Forsey Tourbillons: The Heart and Soul

Greubel Forsey is many things to many watch collectors, but its heart and soul is the tourbillon. At a factory where overkill is just enough, the tourbillon occupies both seminal and leading-edge roles in the brand’s mech-rococo narrative.  

As with other first-generation independent auteurs like F.P. Journe, Denis Flageollet, Franck Muller, and Philippe Dufour, Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey spent years honing their vision while working for others. Prior to launching the original Greubel Forsey watch in 2004, they worked in restoration, prototyping, research and development with Audemars Piguet Renaud et Papi, and were principals in the development of CompliTime S.A. 

The 2004 Greubel Forsey Double Tourbillon 30° should sit atop any historian’s list of the defining watches of that decade. More than a big watch with two tourbillon regulators, it was a shockingly mature statement of its creators’ ability. Whereas other brands like Journe, Voutilainen, and even De Bethune started with modest levels of decoration, borrowed base calibers, or both, Greubel Forsey’s first watch was an entirely original execution with Formula One levels of detail perfection.

The  DT 30° has a tourbillon-within-a-tourbillon, with an angled inner cage rotating once per minute, and an outer four-minute tourbillon parallel to the plane of the dial. Combined with an overcoil hairspring, free sprung balance, and exhaustive regulation, the result was a genuinely functional solution to the chronometric irrelevance of tourbillon regulators in the post-pocket watch era. A variant of this movement went on to win with a record score at the 2011 Concours de Chronométrie, a rare modern timing competition with winners and losers among elite entrants.  

Decoration was as relentless as the engineering. Starting with a huge caliber size, Greubel Forsey used its massive canvas to establish the design vernacular of its next two decades. Maillechort bridges with steel-brush frosting, black polished and rounded tourbillon supports, jewels set in golden chaton cups, mile-wide bevels, and solarized barrels left no surface untended.  

The state of the art advanced with Greubel Forsey’s launch of a single tourbillon regulator in 2007. Now angled at 25°, the Tourbillon 24 Secondes also proposed a massive leap in tourbillon rotation speed. While the 3Hz beat rate remained, aggressive gearing meant one rotation in 24 seconds, with visual fireworks to match. Comparatively restrained in design, the Tourbillon 24 Secondes earned its minimalist “Vision” iteration the Aiguille d’Or at the 2015 GPHG — the equivalent of “Best Picture”  at the Academy Awards of watchmaking. 

In watchmaking in the 2000s, too much was never enough, and Greubel Forsey was happy to set the mark with its 2008 Quadruple Tourbillon. Effectively two Double Tourbillon 30° regulators with sapphire bridges, housed in a single case and averaged by a spherical differential, the watch was both a flex, and a legitimate proposal for cost-no-object improvement on the Double Tourbillon. While not compact by any means, the 43.5mm case was remarkable for its near identical measurements relative to the Double Tourbillon. It was, and is, the most extreme expression of the tourbillon in company history. 

As the 2000s gave way to a new decade, Greubel Forsey began to explore new ways to preserve, cultivate, and perpetuate traditional watchmaking techniques. In parallel to the collaborative “Naissance d’Une Montre” initiative with other creators, Greubel and Forsey — the men — decided to create an in-house workshop whose only focus was traditional craftsmanship. That might sound redundant for a company long renowned for making one watch per employee per year, but the reality is that even 100-150 pieces annually requires some automation. 

2019’s Hand Made 1 was not that kind of watch. Crafted entirely by techniques pre-dating the 20th century, the single tourbillon Hand Made 1 eliminated modern watchmaking staples such as CNC machines, electrical discharge machining, and all power-operated tools. Naturally, such a watch would feature Greubel Forsey’s signature tourbillon regulator, but the lack of automation meant a 6,000-hour production process. The tourbillon cage, which ordinarily could be cut as a unit and in the rough by CNC, instead required a more laborious creation of individual parts crafted by hand. While less visually intense than previous Greubel Forsey tourbillons, this one required 35 times as many man hours to produce. 

A conventional laboratory looks to the future; the Hand Made program looked to the past. Even specialized parts such as hairsprings were researched, engineered, and fabricated internally. Screws that would have taken minutes to make by the hundreds by machine, were fabricated individually over the course of several hours. Scratch-built wheels required six hundred times as long to make relative to machine-made equivalents. Combine these challenges with countless others, and the annual production of two to three Hand Made 1 tourbillon watches makes total sense. 

In 2025, Greubel Forsey has returned to its roots with a new vision for the tourbillon. No longer sidetracked by its early 2020s fixation on sports watches and volume, the company recently launched its first flying tourbillon in its smallest-ever watch. 

The Nano Foudroyante EWT is Greubel Forsey in microcosm; ruinously expensive, gloriously uncompromising, and completely unexpected. Despite its master of the tourbillon, Greubel Forsey has never created one without an upper bridge. The “flying tourbillion,” which was invented by German watchmaker Alfred Helwig in the 1920s, today offers a cleaner view of the device and a potentially thinner overall package. Both features are welcome in this 37.9mm case, which is Greubel’s smallest yet. 

The Nano Foudroyante consists of a dial on the tourbillon carriage, with a hand jumping six times per second. Following previous experiments with a miniature foudroyante, or “lightning” seconds hand visible only through a magnifying glass in the case, Greubel Forsey has scaled up the complication without undermining the operation of the tourbillon or the chronograph. By integrating the foudroyante into the tourbillon drivetrain, the creators have ensured that the two run in synchronized fashion with constant load and a stable rate. Consuming 1,800 times less energy than a standard foudroyante, the Nano Foudroyante uses just 16 nanojoules of energy per jump.   

The ultimate future goal is a watch with a 180-day power reserve. In that sense, the 2025 Nano Foudroyante EWT continues in the footsteps of the magnifying glass-equipped 2017 prototype of the same name. But whereas that watch was not for sale and bereft of a tourbillon, the 2025 watch suffers neither deficiency. It’s also not the final step Greubel Forsey’s long journey towards its ultimate fusion of complexity, endurance, and miniaturization. Whatever form that timepiece takes, it will be a Greubel Forsey premiere, and there’s a good chance it will include at least one tourbillon.