Geneva Watch Days: Gerald Genta Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian

For Gérald Genta, the minute repeater was never merely a demonstration of mechanical mastery. It was one of the complications closest to the legendary designer’s heart: a means of transforming timekeeping into something far more emotional, expressed not only through mechanics and design, but also through sound. To mark the Geneva Watch Days 2026, the revived maison is continuing a special tradition of its founder and presenting the ‘Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian’. The model combines a dial made from rare natural stone with a yellow gold case, which has been specially designed for its acoustic performance.

The new Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian is the successor to the Geneva Minute Repeater Black Onyx and forms part of the wider ‘Geneva’ collection, whose name refers to the city where Gérald Genta founded his eponymous company in 1969. At its heart lies what Genta termed ‘L’Esprit de Genève’: on the one hand, the technical precision and artisanal tradition of Geneva’s historic ‘cabinotiers’; on the other, the rounded forms, sculptural proportions and vitality associated with Genta’s Italian artistic sensibility.

This interplay of different disciplines is particularly well suited to a minute repeater. Throughout his career, Genta worked closely with master watchmaker Pierre-Michel Golay, whose watchmaking expertise – and, charmingly, his passion for opera – helped shape the acoustic character of Genta’s striking watches. The new ‘Golden Obsidian’ minute repeater continues this fascination with sound, yet approaches it through a distinctly contemporary design.

You can find out more about Gerald Genta’s minute repeater with a black onyx dial here in our article.

A dial shaped by volcanic forces

Whilst the watch’s movement gives it its voice, it is the dial that lends this special edition its personality. Instead of the elegant, monochrome black onyx of its predecessor, the new model features golden obsidian, a volcanic glass formed by the rapid cooling of felsic lava, leaving no time for mineral crystals to form. Beneath its natural surface, shifting brown and golden reflections emerge, caused by trapped microscopic gas bubbles or tiny mineral inclusions. This means that the material changes its character depending on the angle of the light and – crucially – that no two dials are identical – which is always a delight for collectors.

“The incredible thing about obsidian dials is that no two are alike,” explains Matthieu Hegi, artistic director of La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. “This rare blend of gold and brown tones conveys a genuine sense of individuality.” As Hegi points out, obsidian is more commonly found in black with lighter inclusions, which makes this particular combination of earthy brown and gold all the more distinctive.

These colours also create a harmonious interplay with the yellow-gold 3N case. Curved and rounded yellow-gold hour markers are combined with similarly polished, rounded gold hands that taper to an arrow-shaped tip. Surrounding them is a printed white minute scale, the geometry of which is more playful than it appears at first glance: circular towards the centre, yet following the cushion-shaped contour of the case at the outer edge. This creates a subtle optical illusion whereby, depending on how the light falls on the obsidian, the dial appears to shift between circular and cushion-shaped forms.

The case: Designed for sound

The distinctive case of the Geneva Collection has its roots in vintage geometry, yet its construction is anything but nostalgic. The cushion-shaped case, with a diameter of 40 mm and a thickness of just 9.60 mm, is crafted from 3N yellow gold, with flowing gadroons softening its architectural contours. Alternating satin-finished and polished surfaces emphasise its shape, whilst the polished double gadroons deliberately echo historical creations by Gérald Genta.

In this case, however, aesthetics and acoustics are inextricably linked. Yellow gold was chosen not only for its appearance, but also for its acoustic properties, which, according to the watch manufacturer, allow the repeater to resonate with greater warmth and purity. Hegi and the team at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton therefore treated the case almost as a sound box and carefully calibrated its proportions, thickness and internal architecture to suit the striking mechanism.

At its thinnest point, the case measures just 0.6 mm, whilst the bezel and case back have been hollowed out via circular boreholes on the inside to reduce unnecessary mass and allow sound to propagate more freely. Instead of securing the two components separately, the bezel and case back are screwed directly together, halving the number of screws whilst maintaining the rigidity required for such a slim design. Even these screws are not guided, in order to remove any further material that might impair resonance.

The sapphire crystal has also been reduced from the standard 1 mm to 0.8 mm to enhance sound transmission. It is an almost obsessive endeavour to remove anything that might stand between the movement and the listener, whilst at the same time creating the slim, understated profile that characterises the Geneva collection.

The minute repeater: emotion through sound

This meticulous attention to case construction is only to be expected, given Genta’s own exacting approach to minute repeaters. For him, the success of this complication was ultimately measured by what reached the ear. In the Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian, this philosophy extends from the architecture surrounding the movement right through to the construction of the striking mechanism itself.

The watch uses traditional ‘single-rotation gongs’, each of which is individually ground and then tuned by hand by ear. The watchmakers then adjust each gong to achieve the desired amplitude of oscillation. They are combined with black-polished hammers, and the resulting mechanism is designed to produce – as the manufacturer describes it – a clear, crystalline sound with considerable resonance and volume.

The gongs are activated by a slender repeater lever integrated into the left-hand side of the case. Rather than interrupting the curved silhouette of the Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian, it follows the profile of the case, thus preserving the flowing lines of the design whilst offering the tactile interaction characteristic of a manually operated minute repeater.

A direct link to the brand’s founder can also be drawn here. “Mr Genta was convinced that a minute repeater should evoke emotions through its sound,” explain master watchmakers Enrico Barbasini and Michel Navas. “With the GG-002 [the watch’s calibre], we have sought to achieve precisely this balance between mechanical excellence and beauty.”

The GG-002 movement

Hidden behind the striking mechanism is the GG-002, a hand-wound in-house calibre developed entirely in-house by Barbasini and Navas at La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton. The movement, which is fully visible through the open case back, is 5.46 mm high, comprises 316 components and 32 jewels, and operates at a frequency of 3 Hz. Despite the high energy requirements and complexity of the minute repeater mechanism, it offers a remarkable power reserve of 80 hours.

Its technical merits are complemented by traditional finishing in the style of haute horlogerie. The movement is entirely hand-finished and features Geneva stripes, circular graining and hand-bevelled edges throughout. Polished gold masselottes are fitted to the balance wheel, forming an inertia-based regulating system that enables precise adjustment and adds a further, exquisitely finished detail to the calibre.

Here, too, Genta’s visual vocabulary comes to the fore. The flywheel is octagonal in shape – one of the designer’s recurring geometric hallmarks – whilst a sophisticated winding system with a detent mechanism has been incorporated to lend the manual winding of the watch a distinctive tactile quality. In other words, the sensory experience goes beyond simply hearing the repeater: winding, activating and wearing the watch are all intended to be part of the interaction.

Strap

The warm colour palette is complemented by a brown calfskin strap, set between newly designed lugs that are 20 mm wide at the case and taper to 18 mm. The texture and muted brown hue echo the natural colour nuances of the golden obsidian without competing with them, whilst the redesigned lug construction ensures that the strap fits snugly around the wrist.

A golden obsidian cabochon set into the yellow gold crown provides a final link to the dial and reinforces the impression that the material is not merely a decorative surface applied to an existing watch, but is central to the identity of this special edition.

The ‘Geneva’ collection – and the next chapter for Gérald Genta

The Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian makes its debut at an interesting juncture in Gérald Genta’s recent history. Following the revival of the house in 2023 with the support of ‘La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton’ and under the artistic direction of Hegi, the initial focus was on reinterpretations of Genta’s unconventional ‘Gentissima Oursin’, which was almost a jewellery watch. The “Geneva” collection, which diverges significantly from this, has since established its own strand within the designer’s legacy, combining understated elegance with high complications and a case architecture shaped by the traditions of Geneva watchmaking.

The Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian perhaps illustrates this approach most impressively. There is much that catches the eye – not least a dial that was literally created by volcanic activity – yet much of the watch’s true sophistication lies in details that are either difficult to discern or entirely invisible: a case wall reduced to fractions of a millimetre, a hollowed-out bezel and case back, a thinner crystal, hand-tuned gong tones and an architecture designed to optimise the propagation of sound.

In this sense, it is less about reviving a design by Gérald Genta than about reviving his way of thinking. Technical complexity is not regarded as an end in itself, but is placed at the service of a more sensory experience. The ‘Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian’ translates this philosophy into a watch that can be seen, touched and – most importantly – heard.

The Gérald Genta ‘Geneva Minute Repeater Golden Obsidian’ (Ref. EBFE02A1) will be available from September 2026; the price is available on request.

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