The news broke about a year ago – industry veteran Jean-Claude Biver and his son were about launch their own brand. The idea was to launch a “small family brand, for passionate people, and very exclusive watches“. Off the record, the first watch was to be a carillon minute repeater tourbillon with a micro-rotor presented […]
What dial style do you prefer? Roman numerals, Arabic numerals, markers… the good news is that you no longer have to choose. With the Byrne Gyrodial, the face of your watch changes over time or depending on your mood, with markers rotating every 24 hours to change their appearance. Byrne was founded by John and […]
In a very short period of time, Louis Erard has made a name for itself as a go-to brand for original collaboration watches and for its democratising approach to offering traditional métiers d’art to a broader public. The latest model flaunts an exquisite handmade dial using wood marquetry to depict an abstract cubist pattern. Handmade […]
Gaël Petermann and Florian Bédat created their independent watchmaking brand in 2017. In 2020, the dynamic duo of talented young watchmakers received a well-deserved industry accolade, taking home the Horological Revelation Prize at the prestigious GPHG for their superbly crafted 1967 Deadbeat Seconds. Petermann Bédat now moves one step further into complexity and high-end watchmaking […]
Creating a brand that revolves around a single watch design takes a lot of bravado. However, if the design is by the late Gérald Genta, one of the most successful watch designers of the 20th century, it is feasible. The brand Gerald Charles was founded by Gérald Charles Genta in 2000. Following his death in […]
Urwerk‘s co-founders Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei first discussed their ideas for a new piece back in 1995 and officially founded the company in 1997. That same year, they launched the UR-101 and UR-102 watches at Baselworld, sci-fi-inspired creations with wandering hours running on a semi-circular minute track at the top. Recently, these two simple […]
Belgium-based indie watchmaker Ressence has always been a brand apart, whether for its minimalistic, almost industrial approach to design, its display that looks like nothing else on the market, or certain functions that you would usually not expect in a high-end mechanical watch. Among all of the brand’s creations, one stands apart for its longevity, […]
One of the best examples of what an independent watchmaker with friends can achieve is the MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual (or LM Perpetual). For many years, MB&F was a brand responsible for nurturing love towards Horological Machines with their retro-futuristic looks, inspired by the founder Max Busser’s childhood space-age fantasies and comic book heroes. In […]
You can search through long lists of watch brands that ceased to exist, but finding a sleeping beauty like this one seems impossible, at least to me. And mind you, it’s not one of the hundreds of brands that didn’t make it through the seventies, a.k.a. quartz crisis, but one that started shortly after, during […]
It’s hard to imagine twelve years have passed already since we were amazed by the revolutionary (pun intended) orbital display of time by Ressence. It was extremely unusual and original when it was first presented, and it remains that way to this day. The concept uses a clever system of gears and ball bearings to […]