Just in time for a month-long sojourn full of fiery summer days and Champagne-fueled nights, Grand Seiko has unveiled the latest additions to its ‘Elegance’ collection: aptly named for its focus on moderately sized, mostly complication-free dress watches.
Nicknamed the Boshū and Bantō, these time-only mechanicals – sitting pretty at a case size of 37.3mm – are yet another in the canon of designs inspired by GS’ ongoing fixation with sekki (‘seasons’).
To be sure, you could absolutely intuit that these watches channel the beauty of natural Japanese landscapes – during high autumn and early spring respectively – but really, the leitmotifs which come to mind when I look at these are ‘a red-hot Aussie summer’ and ‘glass of bubbles’. Art – meet subjectivity, I guess.
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Honing in a little more on the craft that’s used to make these releases, each features a finely textured dial requiring a mixture of chemical processes and high-precision machining in order to create – not unlike Grand Seiko’s signature ‘Iwate’ dials.
In red, the effect is of a sandy/rock-like surface that is covered in vibrant red dust; while the ‘Champagne’ treatment lives up admirably to its name – channeling the swirling, tightly beaded appearance of a glass of grapey fizz. It goes without saying then that these would be great ways to accessorize your summer fit – perhaps not on croc skin leather, though.
But beyond the height of the Australian summer, it’s a safe bet that these Elegance releases will prove to be worthy daily companions – powered by Grand Seiko’s refined, highly iterative Calibre 9S64. This manually wound movement, which is outfitted with a number of proprietary Seiko technologies, gives the Boshū and Bantō an accuracy rate of +10/-1 seconds per day – expressed in the calm, balletic sweep of the seconds hand across each respective dial.
