News · Fears
Fears is retiring the Brunswick Jump Hour, on sale for one week only
The Brunswick 40.5 Jump Hour Ultimus can only be ordered between 10 and 17 August, and it pairs a sapphire dial over a glowing ceramic centre with Christopher Ward's JJ01 module.
Hen & Mills Editorial · 3 min read · 9 August 2026
Charge the Brunswick 40.5 Jump Hour Ultimus under a lamp and the whole centre of the dial glows, the hour aperture and the minute track sitting dark against it. The dial is sapphire over a luminous ceramic centre, in a finish Fears calls Phantom White. Lume normally goes on the markers. Here the lume is the dial, which is a completely different effect, and a photograph only gets you halfway to it.
It's a send-off. Fears is retiring the Jump Hour, orders open on 10 August and close at 23:59 BST on 17 August, and that is the end of the model. No piece count, no numbered run. Production isn't capped, the ordering window is, which is a straighter way to run a deadline than inventing a round number and calling it scarcity.
Christopher Ward built the jump
The jumping hour runs on Christopher Ward's JJ01 module, sitting on a Sellita SW200 base. Two British brands at nothing like the same price, sharing a complication module, and neither of them coy about it. Ten years ago it would have been left off the spec sheet and quietly hoped about. Christopher Ward engineered the module, Fears builds the watch, and neither half of that needs an apology.
The plain SW200 underneath keeps the servicing story ordinary, which matters more than it sounds. Build a jumping hour on something exotic and in fifteen years it is a watchmaker's headache. This one won't be.
A cushion case with no flat surfaces
The Brunswick case is 40.5mm of 316L stainless steel, cushion shaped, brushed and polished, on 20mm lugs and rated to 100 metres. The shape comes from a gentleman's cushion case watch Fears made in 1924, and the brand reckons there is not a flat surface anywhere on it. The crown is a bespoke onion.
Fears also says the case is machined to the standard it keeps for precious metals. That is a claim about tooling and the hands running it, and a cushion case is where a claim like that gets found out, because every curve has to meet another curve. The strap is handmade Epsom leather in Obsidian Black, and the bracelet is a five-link with screw links and a butterfly clasp.
7,100 pounds, then a queue until November
It's 7,100 pounds on the strap, 7,500 if you want the bracelet as well. Like every Fears, the Ultimus is hand-built in England in small batches, and this one was made with Andrew Morgan.
Watches leave in the order they were bought, the first batch from November and the rest from January. Pounds are the only currency Fears has put on it, so buying one from here means watching the exchange rate for as long as you're in the queue.
