Clarity and Precision. Nomos Glashütte.
The watchmaking brand Nomos Glashütte was established in 1991 in Glashütte, a town in the easternmost part of the Ore Mountains in the Free State of Saxony: the birthplace of the German watchmaking industry. Nomos Glashütte quickly made a name for itself with designs inspired by the ideas of the Deutscher Werkbund, a still existing German association of artists, architects and designers established in 1907 and the Bauhaus school. The Dessau maxim “form follows function” is an approach that Nomos Glashütte has emulated in an exemplary manner to this very day, using good design to make timeless products that are unaffected by ever-changing fashions and tastes. Nomos Glashütte stands out among watchmakers not just for aesthetic but also for technical reasons. Rather than depending on tried and tested Swiss calibres and adding refinements to them, as was done in earlier years, Nomos Glashütte can now rightfully claim the title of manufacture: for years now, Nomos Glashütte has relied exclusively on manual movements developed in-house and made almost entirely of individual components manufactured in Glashütte. Working in cooperation with the Technische Universität Dresden and the Fraunhofer Institute, Nomos Glashütte made a quantum leap toward complete independence when seven years of in-house development culminated in the completion and subsequent series production of its very own swing system, which is responsible for driving the watch movement and keeping it accurate. The Nomos Glashütte swing system replaced the escapement assembly composed of the balance, balance spring, escape wheel and pallet fork that until then had been made only by the Swatch subsidiary Nivarox. Nomos Glashütte is one of only a few companies that have the technical capabilities needed to carry out such manufacturing and calibration tasks, on the scale of thousandths of a gramme, within their own facilities. Even the particularly difficult task of putting together the entire escapement assembly is done in-house by Nomos Glashütte.