After examining the Hand Made 1 and Hand Made 2 in Geneva, I was left thinking about what the word handmade asks of a watch—and of the people who make it.

By Brent Robillard

Late Saturday night, I returned home from Geneva. The following morning, I took my coffee down to the lake and began going through the photographs from the trip. Geneva had been a blur of appointments, handshakes, hurried meals, and watches passed across tables. At home, with the water in front of me and nowhere else to be, the details finally had room to settle.

Several of the photographs showed the Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 and Hand Made 2 resting on a coffee-service tray. That was my improvised studio at the Beau-Rivage. I had no softbox, backdrop, or proper lighting with me, so I borrowed the tray beside the window and repeatedly dismantled the hostess’s immaculate arrangement. She restored it each time. I disturbed it again. Diplomacy has its limits when the light is good.

Looking at those photographs, I kept returning to one word: handmade.

Greubel Forsey handmade 1 at the Beau-Rivage in Geneva — Greubel Forsey Hand Made 1 @calibre321

A Word Stretched Thin

Handmade is one of the most flexible words in watchmaking. In a broad sense, most mechanical watches contain some degree of handwork. A person may assemble the movement, set the hands, regulate the calibre, inspect the case, or attach the strap. Further up the ladder, specialists polish bevels, finish screws, decorate bridges, and bring cases through several alternating surfaces by hand.

All of that work describes the term ‘handmade’. None of it, however, describes precisely the same thing.

A component can be manufactured by an automated CNC machine and then beautifully finished by hand. A movement can be assembled by a watchmaker from parts produced industrially. A dial may be printed mechanically before an artisan applies one small detail. The watch industry regularly gathers these very different processes beneath the same generous umbrella.

This distinction describes process rather than moral hierarchy. Modern machines provide consistency, precision, and tolerances that earlier watchmakers could scarcely have imagined. They have also made reliable mechanical watches available at prices that allow far more people to enjoy them. Hand-finished and handmade are different descriptions, and the difference becomes important when thousands of hours—and a significant part of the asking price—depend upon it.

Advertisement

Inside Laurent Ferrier: The Art of Hand-Finishing

Seven Finishes on a Single Bridge

When Bob Allaby and I sat down with Patrick Graells at the Beau-Rivage, Patrick showed us an enlarged photograph of a Greubel Forsey balance bridge. The component filled the screen. He then identified seven different types of finish across its small surface: changes in polish, grain, brushing, bevelling, and texture that were difficult to appreciate even at that scale.

Afterwards, he handed us loupes and placed the watches in front of us. I could finally see what he had been describing, although seeing it required patience, good light, and more magnification than most owners will use in daily life. That single bridge accounts for approximately 30 hours of labour.

Thirty hours is nearly a working week devoted to one component, much of its achievement effectively invisible on the wrist. That invisibility is central to the idea. If the standard ended where unaided eyesight ended, the bridge would have been finished many hours earlier.

Greubel Forsey’s public language speaks of ‘No concessions.’ Patrick gave the idea an even sharper edge during our conversation: ‘No exceptions.’ A motto can sound like advertising until someone places the evidence under a loupe. Here, it means the standard does not relax because a surface is small, difficult to reach, or hidden from view.

The Hand Made 1 from the front — The Hand Made 1 was introduced in 2019 @calibre321

Making the Hand Made 1

The Hand Made Collection pushes that principle beyond decoration and into manufacture. Its roots belong to the same effort that Robert Greubel, Stephen Forsey, Philippe Dufour, and the Time Æon Foundation have made to preserve traditional watchmaking knowledge. The Foundation’s Naissance d’une Montre project set out to create a watch using historical methods and manually operated tools, while passing those skills from one generation to the next.

Introduced in 2019, the Hand Made 1 is the more complicated of the two Greubel Forsey watches we examined. Its manually wound movement contains 272 components, while the white-gold case adds another 36. Approximately 95 per cent of the watch is made using hand-operated tools. Even the regulating organ is produced in the Atelier, including a balance spring fashioned from an alloy prepared in-house.

One Hand Made 1 requires more than 6,000 hours of work. That figure represents roughly three years of full-time labour before accounting for the research and development behind it. The finished watch measures 43.5mm across, delivers 60 hours of power reserve, and places its tourbillon prominently on the dial. Greubel Forsey currently completes just one per year. The price is available on request.

The figures are almost too large to be useful. Six thousand hours makes sense mathematically, but it resists imagination. The 30-hour bridge offered me a better point of entry. I could picture someone arriving at a bench on Monday morning and still working on the same small piece as the week drew to a close. Multiply that concentration across hundreds of components, and the larger number begins to acquire weight. And then, what if a mistake is made on Thursday?

The back of the Hand Made 1 — The manually wound movement contains 272 components @calibre321

Five Thousand Hours Without a Tourbillon

The Hand Made 2 arrived in 2024 with a simpler display. It indicates the hours, minutes, small seconds, and power reserve. There is no tourbillon, yet simplicity on the dial has done remarkably little to simplify its creation.

The movement and case comprise 270 components, 96 per cent of which are handmade. More than 5,000 hours are required to complete a single watch. Its balance spring is coiled, cut, and adjusted by hand, while its bridges combine frosting, black polishing, straight graining, polished flanks, and hand-finished bevels. The 40.9mm white-gold case houses a manually wound movement with 72 hours of power reserve. Production reaches only two or three pieces per year, and pricing is again supplied on request.

Removing the tourbillon reduces the labour by only about 1,000 hours. That comparison reveals where much of the difficulty lies. Complications are demanding, but the Hand Made Collection also spends extraordinary amounts of time on parts that every mechanical watch requires: wheels, pinions, bridges, screws, springs, and the surfaces that support them.

A tourbillon announces its complexity through motion. A well-made screw does not. Under the principle of no concessions, both receive the time their makers believe they require.

The Hand Made 2 at the Beau-Rivage from the front — Greubel Forsey Hand Made 2 @calibre321

Advertisement

What the Machine Gives Us

It would be easy to turn this into an argument against modern manufacturing. That would miss the point. A CNC machine is extraordinarily good at producing a part repeatedly and accurately. Contemporary watchmaking depends on such equipment, including at the highest levels. Handmade production does not automatically guarantee better timekeeping, greater durability, or even greater beauty.

Greubel Forsey’s project asks a different question: what skills disappear when the machine becomes the only practical answer? A watchmaker who can finish a component created elsewhere possesses one body of knowledge. Making that component from raw material with traditional tools requires another. If nobody continues to practise those methods, the knowledge eventually becomes historical description rather than a living craft.

That helps explain why neither Hand Made watch claims a convenient 100 per cent. Certain specialist components and materials remain outside the practical reach of traditional workshop methods. Stating 95 or 96 per cent acknowledges the boundary. ‘No concessionns’ does not require pretending that the boundary is absent. It requires applying the chosen standard everywhere that standard can honestly be applied.

Capacity, rather than demand, determines production. The Hand Made workshop can complete only a handful of watches in a year because skilled labour cannot be accelerated like a machine cycle. More orders would not create more hours, and adding people without the necessary knowledge would solve nothing. Time is part of the material from which these watches are made.

The case back of the Hand Made 2 — More than 5,000 hours are required to complete a single Hand Made 1 @calibre321

Seeing What Is Humanly Possible

I will never own a Greubel Forsey. Desire is plentiful; realism is the limiting factor. That knowledge did not lessen my interest in the watches Patrick placed before us. Ownership was never the reason for the visit.

Objects at this level serve another purpose for enthusiasts who will encounter them only across a table, through a loupe, or in photographs. They establish a boundary. They show how far patience, dexterity, accumulated knowledge, and stubbornness can be pushed when commercial scale is removed from the equation.

The irony is that my photographs of these watches were made with whatever I could find. A hotel tray became a reflector. Window light became a softbox. The hostess’s carefully arranged coffee service became collateral damage. The watches themselves allowed no such shortcuts.

When I visit the Doge’s Palace, I am not shopping for real estate. I go because human beings once imagined such a place and then found the skill, wealth, and labour to build it. The Hand Made 1 and Hand Made 2 inspire a similar response in miniature.

Sometimes, I simply want to see what human beings are capable of.