Balancier QM

Greubel Forsey introduces the Balancier QM – the first timepiece to carry the Qualité Musée standard. Since 2004, the Atelier has held every timepiece to a single, uncompromising level of hand finishing, applied uniformly and never formally named. With Balancier QM, that standard has a name: Qualité Musée. Limited to 33 timepieces in a 39.6 mm white gold case, it is the first expression of a discipline now driven forward by a dedicated research wing within the Experimental Watch Technology Laboratory.

A high-domed sapphire crystal reveals a movement built as a landscape. The escapement sits deep within the architecture; the eye climbs to the small seconds on a higher plane, descends to the mainspring barrel, and rises again to flame-blued steel hands and the chapter ring above. Beneath that ring, a mysterious power-reserve hand travels unseen before resurfacing on a sector to display 72 hours of running time – depth and movement on every level, designed to engage the wearer on the wrist and off it.

Qualité Musée asks that each component, on its own, hold up as a work of art. On a single balance bridge – a few millimetres of steel – seven hand-finishing techniques converge, from barrel polishing to spotting, circular graining and hand-polished bevels. The bi-level escape wheel is bevelled and polished on both faces, the hidden side as carefully as the visible one, and the anchor's ruby pallets are convex rather than flat, so light travels along the stone. Every one of the movement's 298 parts is finished to the same standard.

Turn the timepiece over and the winding system is placed openly on display, its wheels, clicks and springs finished as if they sat on the dial side. As a matter of principle, even the steel components hidden permanently beneath the bridges are flat black polished, just like those in view. To finish only what shows would be to concede that the timepiece is for show. Greubel Forsey has decided that it isn't. Somewhere within, a secret plate engraved Qualité Musée marks the only place the name appears.

At the heart, the 12.6 mm in-house balance is paired with a hairspring made entirely within the Atelier, from the raw material up – part of a commitment to internalise wherever it is the surest way to guarantee Greubel Forsey quality. Balancier QM is both a step further along a road travelled since 2004 and a confirmation of an unchanging belief: the aim is to do the best, not the most. The standard is named.