Fears has taken a deliberate step into high complication watchmaking with the Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar, the most technically ambitious wristwatch in the company’s modern era.
For a Bristol name that has built its revival around restraint, service and a very British sense of ceremony, this isn’t a sudden attempt to chase spectacle.
It feels more like a measured arrival, shaped by family history, in-house discipline and a complication that managing director Nicholas Bowman-Scargill has wanted to make since his teens.
At a glance
- Fears has introduced the Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar as the first high complication in its 180-year history.
- The watch uses a modified Dubois Depraz perpetual calendar module on a hand-finished Sellita SW300, with a moonphase and bespoke calendar typography.
- Developed over more than four years as Project Snow, it marks a major step for the Bristol-based independent watchmaker.
A Bristol name moving beyond revival
Fears was founded in Bristol by Edwin Fear in 1846, when he was just 21, and became the largest watch manufacturer in the west of England at its height.
The company closed in 1976 before Bowman-Scargill, Edwin Fear’s great-great-great-grandson, brought it back in 2016 after leaving a watchmaking apprenticeship at Rolex.
That revival has always leaned on more than a logo pulled from the past.
The modern Fears operation is now back in Bristol, with its headquarters at Paintworks on Bath Road, an in-house assembly workshop below the main offices and a Clifton boutique that opened in April 2024.
The details around the brand can feel almost old-fashioned in the best way.
Clients are served a dedicated Bristol Breakfast tea blend, catalogues are still printed locally and posted, and the company maintains small rituals that make the business feel personal rather than corporate.
The long road from Project Snow
The Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar began with a simple question in 2021, when senior design manager Lee Yuen-Rapati asked Bowman-Scargill what his dream Fears watch would be.
The answer came quickly.
A perpetual calendar had been a long-standing fascination, largely because of the mechanical intelligence involved in a watch that can account for the irregularities of the calendar without a digital connection.
Early sketches followed in 2022, and the project took four-and-a-half years to reach the finished watch.
Internally it carried the codename Project Snow, a fittingly discreet label for a piece that asks Fears to operate in a more demanding technical tier without abandoning its restrained house style.
The watch uses a conventional perpetual calendar display, paired with a modular movement construction.
That decision influenced more than the dial layout, as the case itself had to be adapted to accommodate corrector pushers with visual balance.
A sharper Brunswick case and a calmer calendar dial
The Brunswick case has been reworked rather than merely enlarged or complicated.
Where the standard Brunswick is known for rounded surfaces, the perpetual calendar version introduces flatter case sides, a concave bezel and wide polished bevels.
Those bevels give the watch a more architectural profile, while the straight brushed case band allows the corrector pushers to sit cleanly at the centre line.
The dial is called Silver Mink, a frosted surface coated in pure silver that appears crisp white in bright light and warmer in duller conditions.
Fears pairs it with quad-bevelled black gold indices and tri-bevelled pipette hands, keeping the watch elegant without making it fragile or overly decorative.
The sub-dials are deliberately restrained in scale.
Legibility drove several design choices, including the decision to abandon skeletonised hands because they added visual noise rather than clarity.
Yuen-Rapati also created a bespoke typeface named Bristol, developed from the brand’s logo work and shaped so the letters curve naturally with the calendar sub-dials.
A city-sky moonphase
The moonphase is one of the watch’s most quietly distinctive choices.
Instead of a romantic star field, Fears uses a deep black lacquer disc carrying only two silver moons.
The idea comes from the reality of looking up from a city like Bristol, where the night sky is often black rather than scattered with visible stars.
The moons are finished by hand using charbonnage, giving the display texture without disturbing the dial’s disciplined composition.
It’s a subtle departure from the usual decorative language of moonphase watches, and it suits a brand that tends to express character through small decisions rather than grand gestures.
Details & Specifications
| Brand | Fears |
|---|---|
| Model | Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar |
| Case size | 39 mm |
| Dial | Silver Mink frosted dial coated in pure silver |
| Movement | Hand-finished Sellita SW300 with modified Dubois Depraz perpetual calendar module |
| Complications | Perpetual calendar and moonphase |
| Indices | Quad-bevelled black gold indices |
| Hands | Tri-bevelled pipette hands |
| Moonphase | Black lacquer disc with two hand-finished silver moons |
| Development codename | Project Snow |
The Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar matters because it doesn’t treat complication as theatre.
It takes a deeply traditional mechanism and filters it through the particular habits of a small Bristol watchmaker, where archive, etiquette, design restraint and mechanical ambition now meet in the same room.
