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Today I will be going through everything you need to know about the Geckota Tourbillon; giving an insight into the design process & the future of this exciting range of watches.
The Geckota Tourbillon Silver dial - Limited edition of 10 pieces.
Featuring strong in-house design, crafted with robust materials & packed with small details, the Geckota tourbillon acts as the peak of the current collection, our Tourbillon is designed to present the values of the brand in its purest form and offer something truly unique to the customer. The first versions of the Geckota Tourbillon came out in 2018 in small limited edition quantities of only 10 per version.
The vision for this project started when we first saw the PTS 3300 Chinese-made tourbillon movement, which ended up being the heart of the project. Initially, we were amazed that a tourbillon could be made for such a low price, especially in a world of Swiss tourbillons being high 5 or 6 figures. We quickly set off to do some market research and look into what brands were using these PTS movements, very underwhelmed we found that they were mostly being used by Chinese brands that were very much lacking in design capabilities and just being too cheaply made to make any kind of impression. The next step for us was to test the movement, to make sure that the accuracy and reliability were up to our standards. We bought in a few movement samples and quickly began testing them, to our surprise the first sample that we tested started flatting off the line at +1 second a day. Not a bad start... Of course, the movements aren't consistently running at +1 second a day, definitely not after being cased up and worn, but as you can tell from the fact that we have already made a watch with the movement we were very happy with the results.
As said above, it all started with the movement, so the case has been completely designed around this just like watches of the past where each calibre was a perfect fit for the watch. We cased this 33mm diameter movement in a 40mm case, which as you can imagine didn't leave much space for a movement holder, so the movement is actually milled into the case - providing a perfect fit, and a massively big display aperture on the case back. This is a welcome contrast to most modern watches, which are vastly oversized in comparison to the movement which creates a very small display window on the back.
A large movement allows for a very impressive case back display.
We made it a mission to do justice in the design of the watch and create something really quite special (which is the entire point of the tourbillon!). Due to the heritage of the tourbillon we wanted the piece to be very classically styled and there was no better way to do this than to adopt the Breguet-styled hands, a nod to Abraham Louis Breguet who originally invented the incredible Tourbillon Escapement in 1801. The main inspiration for the watch came from brands like Breguet, George Daniels, R.W. Smith and Urban Jurgensen, all brands that we look up to as the pinnacle of classic style. Notable characteristics of watches from these brands are heavy use of texture in their guilloche dials, metallic toned dials (usually crafted from solid gold or silver) and borderline Gothic styling.
Drawing from the past, our Geckota tourbillon is classically styled yet remains original.
The dial design started from the same concept as the case, around the movement. We wanted to make sure that the whole watch worked together harmoniously - so we made sure to incorporate details on the dial that worked well with the tourbillon carriage. We achieved this through the silver metallic textures on the dial and the choice of hand colour. The blued hands on the silver dial versions blend with the blue screws while the gold hands on the other versions work well with the balance wheel, this incorporation of colour really helped the tourbillon carriage to become a part of the dial, instead of sticking out. As another test of quality, we also wanted to have a large mixture of textures and levels to the dial, so the dial is actually made up of a base level and 5 separate applied pieces (The logo, hour/minute track, seconds track & both the text plaques). Each separate piece has been carefully circular-grained or horizontally brushed and contrasts amazingly against the stamped guilloche textured dial base.
For the silver dial, we have used a hobnail texture in the middle, surrounded by a grained texture.
Something you may not have noticed initially is that the second's track that is surrounding the tourbillon carriage is actually chamfered in shape. This provides even more depth and contrasts to the rest of the dial, as well as blending nicely with the tourbillon carriage as it lowers down. This also acts as another aspect for the light to play with and is yet another small detail which really helps to bring the piece together.
As a contrast to the dial, we wanted the case to be more understated to make sure most of the wow factor came from the tourbillon itself, so we have opted for a pretty simple case design, just with some small chamfered detail on the sides of the lugs. One of the main details outside of the dial is actually on the crown. The middle of it has been enamelled in black which works nicely with the black dial and even the blued hands on the silver dial version. A welcome detail is only seen from the side that doesn't work to overpower any other details.
As mentioned earlier, the massive movement in comparison to the case means we get a pretty impressive display back, showing off the entire 33mm movement, which is quite nicely decorated with "Cotes de Geneve" stripes on the black dial versions, and a skeletonised design on the silver dial version.
The case back view on the black dial versions.
To mark this special limited edition release, we have also engraved "One of 10" and the serial number on the lugs, so you can really get the feeling that you are receiving your own special piece of Geckotas history.
