Often, if we hear of a brand opening up a new factory, it’s dedicated to final assembly, or perhaps to the creation of a new in-house movement. With the exception of RGM, seldom is the focus on the dial.
Recently, Glashütte Original opened up a brand new factory dedicated to creating their own dials. Lest you think that this will water down the prestige of the brand, they will still be making some rather stunning dials out of a variety of precious materials.
The Glashütte Original dial manufactory is one of the few to produce its own blanks. Depending on the dial, the blanks are made of such noble materials as yellow gold, white gold, sterling silver or mother of pearl. On average, dials are only 0.8 mm thick. Special editions such as dials made of fragile mother of pearl generally consist of a 0.4 mm base plate and a 0.4 mm layer of organic material affixed to it.
In short, they’re planning to make some rather high end bits here – just at a much higher volume than they’ve been able to do with strict hand-built only processes in the past. Will this lead to lowered prices, or some perceived lack of prestige? Time will tell – but I, for one, and glad to see that there is still process-based innovation and improvements going on in the industry.
If you’d like to read the full press release, you can read it here.
