Two Watchmakers from Renaud & Papi

Robert Greubel grew up in Alsace, learned the trade in his family's business and worked on IWC's grand complications before joining Renaud & Papi in Le Locle in 1990, the complications specialist now known as Audemars Piguet Renaud & Papi, where he rose to co-director and partner. Stephen Forsey was born in St Albans, England, restored antique clocks, ran the watch restoration department at Asprey in London and trained at WOSTEP before moving to Switzerland in 1992 to join Greubel's team.

Both went independent in 1999, founded CompliTime in 2001 to design complicated mechanisms for other brands, and in 2004 put their own names on a dial, showing the first Greubel Forsey at Baselworld. Today about a hundred people in La Chaux-de-Fonds make roughly a hundred watches a year, which is why Jordan's Tourbillon Cardan is allocated at about eleven a year.

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A Meccano Model and the First Invention

The idea that launched the brand was an inclined tourbillon. Greubel and Forsey could draw it but couldn't picture it working in three dimensions, so one weekend in 2002 Forsey built a model from the Meccano set his father had given him as a boy and showed it to Greubel the next Monday. As Quill & Pad tells it, the model gave them the confidence to develop the idea properly.

The result was the Double Tourbillon 30°, which Greubel Forsey calls its first invention: a balance cage tilted at 30 degrees turning once a minute inside a second cage turning every four minutes, to average out gravity across the positions a wristwatch actually spends its day in. Presented as a homage to Breguet, who patented the tourbillon in 1801, it was made in 144 pieces between 2004 and 2010.

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Fundamental Inventions, Tested Against the Clock

Greubel Forsey numbers its biggest ideas as Fundamental Inventions. After the Double Tourbillon 30° came the Quadruple Tourbillon, two double tourbillons linked by a spherical differential, shown as a prototype in 2005, then the Tourbillon 24 Secondes in 2006, a single cage inclined at 25 degrees turning every 24 seconds. Later inventions moved beyond the tourbillon to other parts of the regulating system.

The brand wanted proof as well as theory. In 2011 a production Double Tourbillon 30° Technique won the International Chronometry Competition in Le Locle with 915 points out of 1,000, the highest score of the contest, after 15 days of testing in different positions and temperatures. Jack Forster calls it a record for a competition that is no longer held.

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Cardano's Rings, Made to Move

A gimbal is a pair of rings pivoted at right angles, the mechanism that kept compasses and marine chronometers level on rolling ships. Its French name, cardan, honours the 16th-century polymath Gerolamo Cardano, who described the suspension in detail, though the device is older. Greubel Forsey turned the idea around: a ship's gimbal swings freely to hold an instrument still, while the rings in Jordan's watch are driven by the movement so the tourbillon never stops changing position.

Launched in October 2023 and engraved as the eighth Fundamental Invention, the Cardan combines a cage inclined at 30 degrees turning every 16 seconds, the fastest Greubel Forsey has made, with two arched rings that tilt it from +30 to -30 degrees every 48 seconds. Because the rings carry the load an upper bridge would normally take, the cage seems to float in open space.

Inside is a 12.6mm balance, used in a tourbillon for the first time, and four stacked barrels give 80 hours. SJX notes Zenith had tried a gimballed tourbillon before, but a freely pivoted one, and Quill & Pad argues the Cardan is really the Double Tourbillon 30° rethought around a single cage.

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Finished by Hand

From the start, Greubel and Forsey wanted to bring hand finishing back to its highest level, and the brand says every watch is finished by hand over hundreds of hours. On the Cardan that means a frosted plate, a hand-polished titanium bezel and grained case band, a titanium cage with hand-bevelled edges, and a black-polished lower bridge shaped like a stylised X.

The founders also worked to keep these skills alive. With Philippe Dufour they started Naissance d'une Montre, in which watchmaker Michel Boulanger made a tourbillon watch by hand while every step was documented, and that thinking led to the Hand Made 1, which Forsey says takes about 6,000 hours per piece.

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Why the Cardan Matters

Tourbillons have long had a credibility problem: Europa Star recalls a 1996 argument that a tourbillon in a wristwatch serves no useful purpose, and many are still expensive ornaments. Greubel Forsey's twenty-year answer has been that a tourbillon earns its place if it is engineered for the wrist, and Europa Star calls it the first independent to develop advanced tourbillons systematically and scientifically.

The Cardan takes that argument further than any earlier Greubel Forsey, though whether it actually keeps better time hasn't been shown: SJX judged the concept chronometrically sound, and the brand has published no timing data. Jordan's GF11 P00753 is one of 55 made from 2023 to 2027, a watch built to prove an idea from a brand that has already proved one on the timing bench.

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Materials

Quality

Finishing is at the very top of the industry. The 1916 Company praises how it blends Swiss and English techniques, and SJX calls it impeccably executed. Greubel Forsey says the movement takes about 600 hours of hand finishing (from an official video, not independently confirmed).

Rarity

Limited to 55 pieces between 2023 and 2027, about 11 a year, from a brand that makes only a hundred-odd watches a year in total (unverified). There is no public resale or auction record for the Cardan yet, so every example is effectively a dealer allocation.

Movement and Complications

A watch's balance keeps time slightly differently depending on how gravity pulls on it, which is why a watch lying flat runs at a different rate from one standing up. A tourbillon puts the balance in a rotating cage so those errors average out, but a normal flat tourbillon only averages the upright positions. The Cardan attacks the problem three ways: tilting the cage 30 degrees brings the flat positions into the average too; spinning it every 16 seconds instead of 60 averages the errors almost four times as often, which suits a wrist that's always moving; and the two Cardan rings, driven by the movement rather than swinging freely like a ship's gimbal, tilt the whole tourbillon up to 30 degrees each way every 48 seconds so the balance keeps passing through new orientations. A large 12.6mm balance and four barrels give a steady 80 hours of power.

Worth Knowing