Ten years ago, Nicholas Bowman-Scargill quietly reopened a company his great-great-great-grandfather Edwin Fear had founded in Bristol in 1846. The watch world mostly missed it at the time. Today, that re-founded Fears is marking a double anniversary — 180 years since Edwin Fear hung out his sign, and ten years since the family name returned to the dial — with the most ambitious watch the brand has ever produced: the Fears Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar.
The Brunswick has carried Fears through its second life. Named for Brunswick Square in Bristol, where the company kept its export warehouse between the wars, its cushion-shaped case, onion crown, and pipette hands turned the brand into a quiet favourite among collectors who like their British watchmaking understated. What the Brunswick had never been was complicated. That changes now: the new 39mm model is Fears’s first in-house perpetual calendar, and it arrives with a thoroughly reworked case that makes the whole collection look sharper.
A Case That Sheds the Bulk
Pick up the Brunswick 39 and the first thing you notice is how much slimmer it feels than its siblings. The earlier Brunswick 38 measured 11.69mm thick; the new watch comes in at 9.4mm, with the mid-case accounting for barely 5mm of that. The cushion case is also no longer a perfect square: at 39mm wide and 37mm long excluding the lugs, it reads a little like a vintage television screen, and the proportions sit noticeably better on the wrist.
The finishing has been upgraded to match. The case is circular-brushed with polished bevels running down either side, and the bezel is now polished and concave rather than convex — a small change that catches light in a completely different way. The lugs span 45.5mm tip to tip, the onion crown remains but has been shaved down a touch, and the water resistance is a sensible 50 metres for a complicated dress watch. On the wrist, the watch wears somewhere between the old 38mm and 40mm Brunswicks, with the modest lug span keeping it comfortable on slimmer wrists.
A Perpetual Calendar Dial That Stays Calm
The dial is where Fears had its hardest job. A perpetual calendar carries a lot of information, and the temptation is to let it shout. Instead, Fears has gone quiet. The base is a softly frosted “Silver Mink” surface coated in warm pure silver, and nearly everything printed on it is black. At 12 sits the month and leap-year sub-dial, at 3 the date, at 9 the weekday, and at 6 — a first for Fears — a moon phase with a black lacquer disc and two hand-finished silver moons. The sub-dials wear a refined concentric texture, and the seconds hand has been dropped entirely so nothing distracts the eye.
Two details reward a closer look. The numerals and lettering use a bespoke typeface Fears designed in-house and named Bristol, after the brand’s hometown, curved to follow each sub-dial. And on the date ring, the number 31 is printed in bright cyan blue — an Easter egg that references the blue accents used across Fears’s recent collections. The applied indexes are quad-beveiled, diamond-polished, and plated in black gold, matching the tri-beveiled pipette hands.
Sellita Base, Dubois Dépraz Module, 2100 and Beyond
Fears has never claimed to build its movements in-house, and it doesn’t pretend to now. Inside the Brunswick 39 sits a Sellita SW300 automatic base carrying a Dubois Dépraz perpetual calendar module on top. It beats at 28,800vph and offers a 47-hour power reserve. But the finishing is where Fears adds its signature: frosted bridges and plates, hand-polished anglage, and a dark rhodium finish, all visible through the sapphire caseback. The rotor is solid 18k gold, custom-made, and stamped with the Bristol Flower.
The calendar mechanics themselves are the everyday sort of perpetual — date, weekday, month, and leap year all correct themselves, and the moon phase tracks the lunar cycle. Set it properly and keep it wound, and the watch should require no calendar adjustment until the year 2100, apart from the usual daylight-saving shifts and periodic servicing. Fears even includes a custom SwissKubik winder, finished in Fears Blue aluminium, so owners can keep it running without thinking about it.
Specifications
| Brand | Fears Watch Company |
|---|---|
| Model | Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar, reference BS239.030 |
| Case | 316L stainless steel, 39mm wide × 37mm long, 9.4mm thick, 45.5mm lug-to-lug |
| Bezel | Polished concave bezel |
| Crystal | Domed sapphire with anti-reflective coating on both sides |
| Caseback | Stainless steel and sapphire, four screws |
| Water Resistance | 50 metres (5 atm) |
| Movement | Sellita SW300 base with Dubois Dépraz 55115 perpetual calendar module, automatic, 28,800vph |
| Functions | Hours, minutes, perpetual calendar (date, weekday, month, leap year), moon phase |
| Power Reserve | 47 hours |
| Dial | Frosted Silver Mink with pure silver coating, black printing, concentric sub-dials, bespoke Bristol typeface |
| Hands / Indexes | Black-gold-plated pipette hands, quad-beveiled diamond-polished indexes |
| Strap | Walnut brown ostrich-leg leather, Fears Blue Alcantara lining, steel pin buckle |
| Availability | Non-limited, numbered edition, from Fears Boutique Bristol and selected stockists |
| Price | £26,950 (incl. VAT); CHF 24,500 / USD 28,500 (excl. VAT) for export |
Fears priced the Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar at £26,950 including VAT in the UK, or CHF 24,500 and USD 28,500 excluding tax for export. It launches as a non-limited numbered edition, available from the new Fears Boutique in Bristol, the official Fears website, and selected stockists. A bespoke version in platinum is offered through the Fears Custom Division for those who want the family calendar in something rarer still.
Ten years after its revival, Fears has answered the question of what a British family watchmaker does when it grows up: it keeps the cushion case, the silver mink dials, and the quiet charm, and lets the calendar speak for itself. The Brunswick 39 is proof that understatement and complication are not opposites — they are, in the right hands, the same sentence.
