Dubai, 23 February 2022 – It is with great excitement – and anticipation – that Christie’s will for the first time ever at auction be presenting international collectors and admirers of Greubel Forsey, with two superb examples of the incredible GMT Sport, in titanium. The blue version is a limited edition of 11 pieces, immediately selling out when first created, while the red version is a special order – only one was ever made.
Remy Julia, Head of Watches Christie’s EMEA, shared: “Watches Online: The Dubai Edit is delighted to have been entrusted with two amazing Greubel Forsey GMT Sport by a collector. This is the first time this model arrives on the sales market. And not only one, but two! Launched by Greubel Forsey in December 2019, the GMT Sport blends outstanding architectural design with horological mastery and augmented ergonomics. For collectors and connoisseurs of modern Haute Horlogerie this is a rare opportunity to acquire such unique pieces.”
In 2019, Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey introduced the GMT Sport with a lightweight and ultra-strong profiled titanium case, with integrated lugs and ovoid bezel to showcase the new movement. Water resistant to 100 metres, this timepiece stands out as the famed Manufacture’s most sport-oriented timepiece to date. The movement was designed from scratch, from the suspended arched bridge for the hours and minutes display to the unique showcase for the Tourbillon 24 Secondes, and the universal time display with the three-dimensional globe.
The open-worked dial, a theatre of high horology, is a Greubel Forsey hallmark. The display side of the GMT Sport presents classic Greubel Forsey architecture, an open, orchestrated vision of watchmaking mastery between suspended bridges, semi-apparent wheels and floating dials in three dimensions. In keeping with the sporting vocation of this timepiece, the focus is on legibility and efficiency. Whether they are visible on the dial side or concealed in the case back side, each of the 435 components of this hand-wound movement, including the titanium plates and bridges, live up to the most demanding criteria of the Atelier Greubel Forsey and the team’s painstaking care for the finest workmanship.
Tourbillon 24 Secondes is showcased at one o’clock, secured by its distinctive and highly polished tourbillon bridge with black finished openings. This third Fundamental Invention by Greubel Forsey in the field of the tourbillon (after the Double Tourbillon 30° and the Quadruple Tourbillon) stands out with its cage inclined at 25° and completing one full rotation in 24 seconds. The rotating tourbillon cage housing the regulating organ has 88 components, for a total weight of 0.38 grams – a feat made possible in particular by light alloy pillars and titanium bridges.
Precision and reliability summarise Greubel Forsey’s ground-breaking GMT mechanism. In this double-patented mechanism, the second time zone indication on the auxiliary dial between 10 and 11 o’clock is combined with a universal time display to intuitively read the current time anywhere in the world. The remarkable innovation and striking spectacle of the terrestrial rotating globe – seen from above the North Pole – performs each complete anticlockwise turn on its axis in 24 hours.
