SBGH267 Whirlpool (Hi-Beat Limited, 2018)

The SBGH267 is a steel Grand Seiko made in 2018 to mark twenty years of the modern 9S mechanical movement series. Grand Seiko produced 1,500 of this version. It has an automatic high-beat movement, a date, and a 39.5-millimeter case—a fairly conventional description for a watch with such an unusual dial.

From a distance, the dial looks like a blue spiral. Closer inspection resolves it into eighty curved lines containing tiny repeated symbols: G, S and the emblem associated with Daini Seikosha, one of the factories that made early Grand Seikos. The decoration is effectively a pattern assembled from the maker's initials and history.

The gold-colored seconds hand is particularly easy to pick out against the blue. It advances ten times each second, driven by the 9S85 movement. That is what Grand Seiko means by Hi-Beat 36000: 36,000 beats in an hour. It remains a conventional mechanical system, unlike the continuously gliding hand of Spring Drive.

Turning the watch over reveals a second blue treatment. The winding rotor, which moves to wind the mainspring, combines titanium and tungsten. Its titanium surface is anodized blue. This is a metal treatment rather than blue paint, and the rotor is visible through the sapphire case back.

The anniversary explains the choice of movement. The 9S series had restarted Grand Seiko's modern mechanical development in 1998, and the high-beat 9S85 followed in 2009. The Whirlpool celebrates that work without printing a large anniversary message on the face. The information has been made into the decoration instead.