PRECISE BEAUTY

In an extension of an earlier story, we take the Grand Seiko manufacture tour, going for the first time to the Shinshu Watch Studio and Atelier Ginza

- ASHOK SOMAN

There are brands that are well-loved by collectors, journalists and people generally enthusiastic about buying watches. We will all have different opinions of what those brands are, but perhaps we can agree on one name: Grand Seiko. The Japanese imprint only emerged as a fully-fledged brand from the shadow of Seiko relatively recently, in 2017. However, everyone had been aware of Seiko’s intentions to spin-off Grand Seiko as its own full brand since an announcement at BaselWorld sometime after the line became available internationally. Technically though, it helps to consider that Grand Seiko is really a deeply rooted part of Seiko’s grand history, and it earned its right to stand on its own merits. Those merits needed to be well-established for Seiko to commit to an independent future for it. One way to understand all this is to visit Grand Seiko’s production facilities in Japan, which is obviously what we did.

Uniquely amongst our manufacture tours in this Legacy annual, we have very recently published a story on Grand Seiko’s industrial and artisanal bases. Despite the excellent story that WOW Thailand shared with us, we felt there was more to add; the story in the Summer issue this year only focusses on the new Grand Seiko Studio Shizukuishi (GSSS) while also establishing the Seiko connection via Seiko House. That story will serve as the launchpad for this one, though you need not have read it to enjoy this latest chapter. This is primarily because, for this visit, we got to see and experience the Atelier Ginza in Seiko House Ginza, where the Kodo is put together, as well as the operations in Nagano, at Seiko Epson. In fact, we could have crafted this whole story on what the previous story did not cover, meaning just the new sites, but we have chosen to do things a little differently.