Glashütte Original Sixties watches

The Glashütte Original Sixties takes its look from the wristwatches made in the 1960s by Glashütter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB), the state-owned maker in East Germany, and above all from the Spezimatic, whose numeral font it borrows for the 3, 6, 9 and 12. It is a simple round case with short lugs and a strongly domed dial. Glashütte Original makes those dials in its own dial works in Pforzheim: each is galvanised, lacquered by hand, then given a final colour with a spray gun that darkens it towards the edge, so no two come out quite the same.

The base watch is the time-only Sixties: a 39 mm case, 9.4 mm thick, around the automatic calibre 39-52, which runs for about 40 hours and shows a gold-weighted rotor through a sapphire back. The Sixties Chronograph uses the automatic calibre 39-34, a modular chronograph built on the same calibre 39 base, with small seconds on the right and a 30-minute counter on the left. The Sixties Panorama Date is the bigger watch at 42 mm and 12.4 mm thick, with the brand's two-disc Panorama Date at 6 o'clock, driven by the automatic calibre 39-47. Both the time-only watch and the Panorama Date also come in rose gold, with silver or black dials.

The Sixties Square Chronograph puts the same 39-34 in a cushion-shaped steel case, 41.35 mm across and 12.6 mm thick. Its 2017 colour series named each dial: Fire in red, Forest in green, Ocean in blue and Tangerine in orange, alongside a grey.

The 2015 Iconic Collection left the 39 mm watch technically unchanged and gave it vivid dégradé dials in red, gold, aqua, brown and grey. In 2018 Glashütte Original started its Annual Editions, one colour a year: green in 2018, then Fiery Orange in 2019 for the time-only and the Panorama Date. Glacier Blue followed in 2020 on the time-only and the Chronograph, a lacquer that shifts from silvery blue towards mauve. The Annual Editions are not limited editions; each colour was made for one year only.