A bit of Soulages, a bit of Breguet, a touch of Éric Giroud, and a lot of creativity. The Schwarz Etienne Geometry collection ends today with its fourth and final chapter. After versions in red, salmon, and steel, the final chapter is draped in black. With a unique difference from the previous versions: this piece is nearly monochromatic. While the first three chapters always featured a small second in a tone distinct from the dial, the La Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture chose for this final version a mouse grey that closely matches the black tone of the dial or the cloud grey of the minute track.
Appreciating the Unexpected
The new Geometry Black has something hypnotic about it. Why? Because the eye instinctively seeks fluid and obvious harmony. It’s used to the Clou de Paris, the azuré, or any regular form of guilloché beneath the hands. But not here. Each pattern on the dial never occupies more than a quarter of the space. Barely deployed, it is abruptly stopped by the next pattern, which in turn gives way to a third relief, and so on. While, since the time of cathedrals, we’ve been conditioned to find beauty in regularity, the Geometry Black invites us to appreciate deconstruction, the unexpected, the accident of the path, the break in the line.
For the Knowledgeable Collector
Obviously, this is a risky endeavor. One must know how to detach from the impression left by each section of the dial to appreciate the overall layout. Leaving the particular to embrace the bigger picture. Gaining perspective, subsuming the broken line into an overall aesthetic view. Not only will this operation require time, but it’s also uncertain whether every collector will succeed in doing so. But that is not the goal of Schwarz Etienne. The manufacture, founded in 1902 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, caters to an informed audience, typical of an independent watchmaking house that can afford high ambitions, as long as it can charm a few avant-garde early adopters.
A Lifelong Companion
These same collectors will most likely have a similar sensitivity toward the movement. The house will not fall short in this regard, with a 100% Manufacture automatic caliber, featuring an elegant micro-rotor, offering a very comfortable power reserve of 86 hours—four and a half days of autonomy—and finished with a proper sobriety. The entire set is housed in a 39mm steel case, without any frills, designed to serve as a setting for the hand-guilloché dial. A precise and cerebral exercise, resulting in an authentic creation that, once understood, will probably never lose its appeal.
Like the other editions, this Geometry Black will be limited to 100 pieces.
