New Grand Seiko Elegance Collection 'Slim' Hand-Wound Limited Editions

[Ichiran]

https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/gr...ns-introducing

"Grand Seiko has just announced the addition of four new watches to the Elegance Collection. Two watches feature Japanese urushi lacquer dials, which are decorated with the technique known as maki-e, and all four are also launch vehicles for the first hand-wound Grand Seiko movement in eight years. This is the caliber 9S63, which takes the basic plate architecture of the existing 9S64 and adds a running small seconds at 9:00, as well as a power reserve indication at 3:00.

Urushi lacquerware is a very old, very traditional decorative art, even by Japanese standards. The technique involves harvesting the sap of the Japanese lacquer tree (a species of poison oak; lacquer workers tend to develop some immunity to the irritating oils in the sap from prolonged exposure) which is aged, and then applied in very thin layers to create a variety of forms. Lacquer dries to a very hard, waterproof and highly lustrous surface and it can be used to decorate a wide range of objects, using a very complex vocabulary of techniques. The specific technique used for the new Elegance urushi watches is called maki-e; this is a method in which gold or silver powder is used as an additional decorative element (fountain pens decorated with maki-e lacquer are in high demand among writing instrument collectors).

At launch, the watches will be available in two rose gold maki-e dial models, and one "Mount Iwate" pattern-dial model in steel; there will also be a gold model with a simple white dial – the latter is the only model of the four which is not a limited edition. All four watches have the same dimensions: 39mm in diameter, and 11.6mm thick."





Lovely size and dials. Thoughts?