News · Grøne Oldenzaal

The Grönefeld brothers build a hand-wound watch you can actually buy

GRØNE's first small-seconds watch runs 39 mm by 10 mm on a finished La Joux-Perret manual calibre, in orange or salmon, 188 pieces each at EUR 2,390 before VAT.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 4 min read · 18 August 2026

• Bart and Tim Grönefeld have launched a second, more attainable line called GRØNE, whose first watch is the hand-wound small-seconds Horologium.
• It comes as Something Quirky, with a Dutch orange dial and baby blue accents, or Something Classic, with a salmon sunray dial and flame-blued hands.
• Each variant is limited to 188 pieces at EUR 2,390 excluding VAT, ordered directly from GRØNE, with deliveries expected from mid-September 2026.

The Grönefeld brothers have spent twenty years going the other way

Anybody who has followed independent watchmaking for a while has had the same experience with Grönefeld: you see one in the metal, you understand immediately why the finishing costs what it costs, and then you look up the price and put the whole idea back in the drawer where you keep the watches you are never going to own. That has been the arrangement between Bart and Tim Grönefeld and most of us for two decades. It is now being renegotiated, by the brothers themselves, with a second line called GRØNE and its first small-seconds watch, the Horologium.

The pricing is the news. This is not a diffusion line in the sense of a big brand licensing its name downwards, it is the same two people in the same town in the east of the Netherlands making something they can actually build in numbers. Oldenzaal is printed on the caseback, and given that Grönefeld has spent its whole existence arguing that a Dutch town can produce watchmaking at the highest level, putting the town's name on the more affordable watch is a deliberate move rather than a decorative one.

Something Quirky and Something Classic, and they are not close to each other

There are two versions, and the naming is refreshingly free of poetry. Something Quirky has a Dutch orange dial ringed with baby blue, the orange somewhere between a marigold and the skin of a mandarin, with a pale blue small-seconds sunk into it and hands done in heat blue. Something Classic goes salmon with a sunray treatment, a raised plateau for the small seconds, flame-blued steel hands and diamond-cut applied indexes.

Quirky carries a Dutch saying printed on its sapphire, "zoals het klokje thuis tikt, tikt het nergens", which translates roughly as there is no clock that ticks like the one at home. Classic leaves the sapphire clear so nothing interrupts the view of the movement's architecture. I expected to want the plain one and I do not, which surprised me, because the orange is doing something that almost no dial at this money does: it commits.

Thirty-nine by ten, and a lug-to-lug that makes the case

The case is 39 mm across, 10 mm thick and 47 mm from lug to lug, in stainless steel with a satin-brushed caseband against a high-polished bezel and caseback. Ten millimetres on a hand-wound watch is what you would hope for and 47 mm lug to lug is the number that determines whether this reads as a dress watch or a slightly shrunken sports watch. It reads as the former, with enough length to stop 39 mm looking apologetic.

Sapphire front and back, sealed with orange gaskets that you only see when the watch is apart, which is exactly the sort of detail a brand includes for its own satisfaction. Water resistance is 5 ATM, so 50 metres, which on a watch with a hand-wound crown you will be operating daily is a sensible rating and about as much as anyone should ask of one.

Sixty hours from La Joux-Perret, finished the way the surname implies

The movement is Swiss, manual winding, supplied by La Joux-Perret, and finished with Côtes de Genève, sunburst snailing, sandblasted surfaces, heat-blued screws, mirror polish and machine anglage, visible through the sapphire back. That is a specific list, and the reason it matters is that this is where the Grönefeld name has to actually mean something. A bought-in calibre finished carelessly would sink the whole proposition.

The power reserve is 60 hours. On a manual watch that figure works differently than it does on an automatic, because you are going to be winding it anyway: 60 hours means that if you forget on a Friday it is still telling you the correct time when you notice on Sunday afternoon. The lug width is 20 mm and the buckle 16 mm, with a strap cut at 110 and 75 mm.

The number that will decide this: 188 each, and not repeated

Each variant is capped at 188 pieces and GRØNE has said the run will not be repeated. That is a small enough number to feel like an independent's output and a large enough one that this is a real product line rather than a gesture. Orders opened on 13 August, with deliveries expected from the middle of September onwards.

What I cannot tell yet is whether a second line eventually dilutes the thing that made the first one desirable, or whether it simply lets more people in. I lean towards the second, because nothing about the Horologium is pretending to be a Parallax Tourbillon. It is a small hand-wound watch with a good dial and an honest movement, from two brothers who have earned the benefit of the doubt.

GRØNE Horologium pricing and availability

The Horologium is priced at EUR 2,390 excluding VAT, sold directly by GRØNE, with VAT calculated at checkout for orders inside the Netherlands and any United States duties charged separately on receipt. Each of the two variants, Something Quirky and Something Classic, is limited to 188 pieces. Ordering opened on 13 August 2026 and deliveries are expected from mid-September. GRØNE has not published a product reference number, and no Australian price has been announced.