Grönefeld Packs a Remontoire, Flying Tourbillon and Deadbeat Seconds Into the 1941 Quadrivium

Tim and Bart Grönefeld have spent a decade diligently reworking the same case and the same basic movement layout until they reach perfection. This new 1941 Quadrivium is where that patience pays off. The 2016 Remontoire introduced the exposed constant-force governor, then the Principia, Decennium Tourbillon and Grönograaf each pushed the platform somewhere new. Now, a lot of those experiments come together. The 1941 Quadrivium combines a remontoire, a one-minute flying tourbillon and jumping central seconds in a single watch, and it's the most complete thing the genius brothers have built.

The case is the 1941 shape you already know: concave bezel, curved lugs, sculpted flanks and a conical crown. It's 40mm wide and 11.3mm thick, which is slim for this much going on underneath. The first run of watches will be made in tantalum, a dark grey metal that's miserable to machine and seems to create its own gravity field with so much weight. After a run of tantalum watches, the case will be made out of platinum. The cases are polished and get sapphire crystals on top and bottom.

The dial is crowded, certainly, but not in a bad way. A frosted champagne base gets hand-bevelled steel frames that outline each opening. Hours and minutes are positioned in an off-center subdial between 12 and three, with faceted white gold markers and blued hands, while the power reserve sits opposite at 11. The flying tourbillon at six has a three-arm steel cage and stops at the 60-second mark, so you can set the watch to the second. At nine o'clock, the governor spins once every 7.5 seconds, so you get to watch the constant-force system do its job. A long central seconds hand has my favorite complication of all time – it jumps in full one-second jumps. Four more dial colors are coming later.

Inside is a hand-wound in-house calibre with 473 parts and 49 jewels. Two concentric barrels run in series for 50 hours of power reserve, though their real purpose is feeding steady torque downstream. The remontoire is a small spring recharged every 7.5 seconds that delivers the same push to the escapement whether the mainspring is full or nearly spent; the governor softens each release so the gear train doesn't take a hit. Finishing follows recent Grönefeld practice, with gable-shaped bridges around the edge (a nod to Dutch canal houses), a long central bridge, gold chatons, black-polished steel and dark blasted recesses. It comes on a leather strap with a tantalum buckle.

The 1941 Quadrivium Premiere Edition in tantalum is limited to 28 examples, priced at €280,000 before tax, with deliveries starting in 2027. A platinum run of 28 will be made after that, priced at €310,000 before tax. See more on the Grönefeld website.