Benu

Presented in 2010, the Benu is the first collection made by Grossmann Uhren GmbH after the brand's refounding driven by Christine Hutter two years earlier, and it remains today the most direct calling card of Moritz Grossmann's aesthetic: a dress watch of classic design, conceived to showcase from the very first model the technical and aesthetic solutions the brand would later carry into subsequent collections. The name recalls Bennu, the mythological Egyptian figure associated with rebirth and the cycle of time — a reference chosen not by chance for the first watch of a brand that was itself presenting itself as a rebirth after more than a century of dormancy.

The friction-silvered dial — a nineteenth-century technique involving the hand-application of an extremely fine silver powder onto a brass plate, to achieve a matte, slightly grainy surface — and the small seconds at 6 o'clock immediately define the collection's understated language, while the faceted, heat-blued hands become a recurring distinctive trait throughout the brand's catalogue. On the movement, visible through the sapphire case back, the technical elements that characterize Grossmann calibers are already present: the balance with a hand-graver-engraved bridge, the micrometer screw regulator and, on more elaborate versions, the system that stops the balance by pulling out the crown for setting the time to the exact second.

Over the years the Benu has been enriched with progressively more complex executions — from the Power Reserve, with power-reserve indication, to the Tourbillon, up to anniversary editions such as the "Lost In Space" for the brand's tenth birthday, with an off-center dial and finishes recalling the lunar surface — while still remaining faithful to the classic, dressy layout that has made it the manufacture's most representative line.