By Harlan Chapman-Green
Kari Voutilainen has gained himself one heck of a following within the watch industry for creating beautiful pieces by hand in his workshop. The new GMT-6 watch produced as a one off for Only Watch 2015 is no exception to this trend. Enough with this introduction, let’s get down to business.
The best place to start is the hand guilloche dial which features a blued centre section that looks similar to a crescent moon, this part features the “Geneva Wave” pattern to it while the outer section of the dial uses a “Barleycorn” pattern that’s been coloured a deep grey. The Breguet style hands are made of white gold and have been thickened slightly from the usual Breguet style to suit the watch perfectly and the holes in the hands aren’t eccentric (off centre) as they are in the traditional hands. This makes checking the time so much clearer as I have noted with some Breguet watches (particularly the complicated ones) that the ultra thin blue hands can disappear on the dial.
Another stand out feature of the dial is the GMT hand which has been given its own position at 6 O’clock. It is a little hard to tell from the picture but it appears that like on other Voutilainen GMT watches the GMT hand shares a sub dial with a seconds hand, meaning that in the picture the GMT hand is simply hidden from view. There’s a fantastic looking day and night indicator here as well with the night half being finished in the same guilloche design and colour as the larger centre section above it. The day half has a rich yellow sunburst guilloche pattern on it with a small sun and the rays extending outwards from it.
You’ll find that the movement in this watch is no different from the movements in the other on Only Watch GMT-6 models, but that doesn’t make it any less special however as the movement has been designed, crafted and then finished off beautifully in-house in the workshops of Kari Voutilainen himself. The movement is on display behind a sapphire crystal case back and has two escape wheels that impulse the balance wheel of the watch which will make it more stable and improve the longevity of the movement itself.
The case of the watch is made of stainless steel and is 39mm in diameter featuring rounded lugs that almost take on an egg shape when viewing from the right angle. It’s one of the 43 one-off timepieces that will come up for sale for Only Watch 2015, an auction dedicated to raising funds to fight Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Can you guess what this watch will sell for? Follow Wrist Review to find out when all these wonderful pieces go to auction on the 7th of November. For more info, please visit voutilainen.ch
HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN – CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
First introduced to horology with the Patek Philippe Calibre 89 by his father few years ago, Harlan enjoys his passion for fine horology. He prefers to spend his time in the boutiques of upmarket brands, trying out new pieces constantly. His preferred 3 brands are A. Lange & Söhne, Breguet and Vacheron Constantin. Although not much for the smaller brands, he still finds the complications intriguing and wishes to own one watch from each of his three favourites. Read his articles here.
