The Bulgari Gérald Genta Gefica Bi-Retro
Memories of the Bronze Age.
It is next to impossible to think of the late Gérald Genta without thinking, almost simultaneously, of a handful of watches he designed which have gone on to become as much icons of watch design, as Monet’s paintings of his gardens at Giverny have become icons of Impressionist art. The Royal Oak, Nautilus, and Ingenieur SL are undoubtedly his best known work, but in the last few years, collectors have increasingly come to more closely examine, and more greatly appreciate, the work he did under his own name, and for his own company. Gérald Genta, the brand, existed under Genta’s ownership and direction for almost years (he started it in 1969) and in 1996, he sold the company to The Hour Glass – and in 2000, the company was acquired by Bulgari. But in the three decades he ran the company, Genta produced some memorable examples of high complex and dare-t0-be-different watches that entered unexplored territory in watch design – one of which was the bronze-cased Gefica Safari.
Under Bulgari, several watches were released which took advantage of both Genta designs, and the movements which had gone to Bulgari along with the Genta trademark. Some of these were dramatic departures from anything that Genta had ever designed himself – usually these were highly complex watches like the Bulgari Octo Grande Sonnerie. However, there were also watches from the post-2000 era which were somewhat closer to some of Genta’s original designs and inspirations – one of which is the Bulgari Gérald Genta Gefica Bi-Retro.
New Watch, Old Metal
Today, bronze in various forms has become, if not ubiquitous, at least a more or less standard feature of the modern watchmaking landscape. It can often be found in diver’s watches, where specific formulations of bronze meant for marine applications (including fittings and propellers) are used, thanks to the resistance to corrosion in salt water of such alloys.
However, the idea of making a bronze watch case was not exactly an intuitive one. Bronze, when exposed to air, will develop a mottled patina that can range in color from grey to green, and a bronze watch case will, sooner or later, develop a patina of its own, just like a cast bronze statue exposed to the elements. For this reason, you will not find bronze used as a case material in pocket watches or wristwatches for most of the history of watchmaking.
In 1984, however, Gérald Genta designed and introduced the world’s first watch with a bronze case. This was the Gefica Safari, and the “Safari” part of the name came from the idea that the watch case, once the patina had developed, would not produce bright reflections that might startle and alert wild animals during safari expeditions. The name is supposed to have come from the names of three big-game hunters who requested the watch: Geoffroy, Fissore and Canali, Ge-Fi-Ca, although, like the legend that the Cartier Crash was born in a fiery automobile accident, the story may be apocryphal. The Gefica’s bronze case, in the original watches, produced a quite heavy patina and while this was intended to be a feature, not a bug, it certainly meant that the Gefica’s audience would remain relatively niche.
21st Century Bronze
This post-2000 version of the Gefica – this version was part of a redesign of the Gefica under Bulgari management – avoids what’s potentially the biggest problem with a bronze-cased watch, and one which might put off even the biggest bronze enthusiast – where the metal touches the wrist, it can leave stains on the skin. Instead of a bronze caseback, the Gefica Bi-Retro uses titanium, which means that the watch combines one of the most corrosion-prone metals out there, with one of the most corrosion resistant. The patina which bronze develops does, however, act as a protective surface layer, preventing further corrosion from taking place (titanium’s corrosion resistance actually comes from the development of a surface oxide layer as well – it’s just much less visible than the patina which develops on bronze).
The Gefica Bi-Retro gets the second part of its name from the double retrograde displays of the date and minutes; the hours are read off the jump-hours window at 12:00. And it is a burly beast of a watch. Bulgari in this version leaned away from the whole idea of safaris in general and big game hunting in particular – going after the Big Five at this point in history does not land the way it did when Hemingway wrote “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” (which, come to think of it, is not exactly a ringing endorsement of big game hunting either).
But there is no doubt that in its aggressive lines and sculptural use of mass and volume, it achieves, as someone once said in another context, an ursine heft, which is full of glorious extroversion. The Gefica Bi-Retro is about as far from the current taste for smaller, classically shaped and proportioned watches as you can get and its almost brutal ferocity makes it a stand-out example of just how far off the beaten path Genta was willing to go. And with Gérald Genta, the company, now returning under its own name at LVMH’s La Fabrique du Temps, you can’t help but wonder if there’s a new Bronze Age in the not too distant future.