Greubel Forsey Double Tourbillon 30

Greubel Forsey Double Tourbillon 30º

GREUBEL FORSEY’s first invention remains one of the most exciting tourbillons ever made.

Let me start by saying that for quite a few people, the expression “exciting tourbillon” is a bit of an oxymoron, but that’s the beauty of the enthusiast community – your niche obsession is recognized. In the case of the Double Tourbillon 30º, I think if you want to call a watch exciting, this is the best place to do it.

The tourbillon has a long, very interesting, but also chequered history. Many of us know the origins of the tourbillon – as far as we know, it was invented by Breguet and patented in 1801. We are also familiar with the history of the tourbillon after the Quartz Crisis, or at least the history of the last few decades – from the early 2000s to the 2008 financial crisis, it seemed that everyone had to have a tourbillon in their product line.

Prior to this, however, the tourbillon was one of the rarest of timepieces. There aren’t many resources out there for those interested in the tourbillon, but one exhaustive and dense book is Reinhard Mies’ Das Tourbillon. As far as I know, the book has never been translated into English (it’s available in German, which has inspired eager watchmakers to learn German). Mies estimated that before 1960, fewer than 300 manufacturers were capable of making tourbillons, and that fewer than a thousand were made between 1801 and 1945—perhaps only about six hundred.