By Brent Robillard
The path less travelled, from the workbench to the Beau-Rivage
There is a familiar route into watch collecting. A Seiko or Citizen gets us through the door. Longines and Tudor suggest what might come next. OMEGA and Rolex become reference points, whether we eventually buy one or simply spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about it.
There is plenty to enjoy along that route. Those watches have earned their place on our wrists. Eventually, though, some of us start asking different questions. Who made that dial? Why does this movement look unlike anything else? How long did someone spend polishing a surface I can barely see?
Follow those questions far enough and you can find yourself in some rather unexpected places.
My own interests have long leaned towards tool watches: legible dials, useful complications, cases that can take a knock. Somehow, that enthusiasm has also led me into the hallowed halls of the Beau-Rivage, peering through a loupe while someone explains a mechanism I am doing my best to understand. I still like a good field watch. Apparently, I also like being shown what thirty hours of work on a single bridge looks like.
At Geneva Watch Days, I packed an anOrdain Model 1 Porcelain alongside a Breitling Aerospace. That feels like a fair description of where my collecting interests now sit. There is room for practicality, and there is room for the pleasure of something made exceptionally well, even when its usefulness is beside the point.
Independent watchmaking rewards that sort of curiosity. You might meet the person who designed the watch, shaped its movement bridges, or spent years working out how to improve an escapement. A conversation about a dial can become a conversation about firing temperatures, metalworking, or the difficulty of keeping a small workshop alive. The watch becomes more interesting because the people and decisions behind it become visible.
The path is less travelled, although certain names along it are hardly strangers to waiting lists, auction records, or hype. What keeps me interested is the work: a convincing idea, the skill required to execute it, and the pleasure of discovering something I had not previously known to look for.
After we published our guide to 75 microbrands, readers and brand owners reached out to me. They wondered about certain exclusions from our list. This is the danger of lists. But many of the questions circled around brands I had always thought of in a different context. In this hobby, there are very few hard lines—only blurred and permeable ones. This article is an attempt to explore some of those brands in a different context and, perhaps, to introduce some of the people who render watchmaking so compelling.
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What do we mean by an independent watchmaker?
Strictly speaking, independence concerns ownership and control. A watch company can be independent while buying its movements from a specialist. Equally, a manufacture can produce an extraordinary amount under its own roof while belonging to a large luxury group. Internal production and independent ownership are related questions, but they are separate ones.
For this guide, I am especially interested in the work a house contributes itself: design, engineering, dial making, movement construction, finishing, or assembly. Where does its expertise live? Which decisions and operations give the finished watch its character? Can we point to something more substantial than a name printed on a dial?
There is no useful percentage that settles the matter. A small atelier making its own dials may have a stronger individual identity than a much larger operation with a longer list of internal capabilities. Specialist collaboration also has a long history in watchmaking. An independently conceived watch can bring together an exceptional dial maker, case manufacturer, and movement developer. The important thing is to describe those contributions honestly.
An in-house movement is therefore neither a requirement for inclusion nor a guarantee of quality. When a maker uses an established calibre, the interesting questions concern what it does with it and where its own work adds value. When it develops something new, we should understand who designs, produces, finishes, and assembles it.
Our scope includes independent houses, small ateliers, and a few closely related artisanal specialists. A few of the brands mentioned here also appeared in the microbrand guide. Remember what I said about hard lines… Across the guide, the emphasis is on distinctive authorship and meaningful craft, with ownership and outside expertise acknowledged where they matter.
Thirty makers I have encountered myself
I have handled watches from every brand in this guide. Some have spent time with me in my studio; others have crossed my wrists during meetings, manufacture visits, or appointments in Geneva. Those encounters differ in depth, and handling a watch at a presentation does not tell us everything that months of ownership would. It does give this selection a basis in direct experience.
The range is deliberately wide. Some of these watches sit within reach of a considered purchase costing a few thousand dollars. Others occupy six-figure territory—or the part of collecting where availability makes the price almost academic. Exploration is the point. Enjoying the work does not require owning it. I do not, for instance, visit Versailles because I am considering purchasing the property.
The entries are alphabetical, rather than ranked. Suggested models are starting points for further reading; they are not a claim that I have reviewed every reference mentioned.
01 | anOrdain
AnOrdain makes a persuasive case for beginning with the dial. Its Glasgow workshop has built an identity around colour, surface, and the difficult business of turning heat and raw materials into something consistent enough to wear on the wrist. Enamel brought the brand to many collectors’ attention; its porcelain work deserves just as much curiosity.
My time with the Model 1 Porcelain reinforced how much a seemingly restrained watch can offer. The surface, typography, and hands give it a character that survives the absence of a complicated movement. The workshop’s dial production is central to that appeal. Bought-in Swiss mechanics support the watch; they do not explain everything that makes it an anOrdain.
Start exploring: Model 1 and Model 2, in porcelain or enamel.
TCW: anOrdain Model 1 Porcelain
02 | Atelier Wen
Atelier Wen asks collectors to look closely at contemporary Chinese craftsmanship. Its watches bring a clear design direction together with specialist skills, including the hand-operated guilloché work associated with Cheng Yucai and the dial artistry explored through Ancestra.
Our hands-on encounter with the Ancestra Jiāo showed how effectively surface and light can carry a watch. Its hammered silver and enamel dial invited repeated inspection. The movement came from Pequignet, an important part of the story rather than something to obscure. Atelier Wen’s contribution lies in its conception, development, and coordination of the finished watch, working with craftspeople whose individual expertise deserves recognition. It is an excellent reminder to ask who made each element.
Start exploring: Perception and Ancestra.
TCW: hands-on with Ancestra Jiāo
03 | AWAKE
AWAKE has made dial craft an inviting entry point into this conversation. The Sơn Mài watches draw on Vietnamese lacquer work, with metallic leaves and different surface treatments creating an effect that changes as the wrist moves. Photographs can suggest the colour; handling helps explain the depth.
These are collaborative watches. AWAKE supplies the design direction and develops the collection with specialist artisans—like the Italian Renzetti guilloché workshop–while Swiss movements from La Joux-Perret provide the mechanics. Claiming that every operation takes place in one French workshop would miss the actual achievement. The pleasure comes from bringing those skills together in a coherent object—and from putting demanding decorative work within a price category more collectors can realistically investigate.
Start exploring: Sơn Mài Silver Leaf, Frosted Leaf, and Guilloché Main.
04 | BA111OD
BA111OD offers an inviting route into independent Swiss watchmaking, with an emphasis on making ambitious mechanics more accessible. Founded by Thomas Baillod in Neuchâtel, the house combines Liliane Murenzi’s design work with assembly in its own atelier and the expertise of specialist partners. Our time with the Chapter 7 Skeleton provided an introduction to the everyday end of that approach.
The broader mechanical story deserves attention, too. Olivier Mory’s BCP Tourbillons developed the tourbillon movements for Chapter 4 and the complication module behind CHPTR_Δ. Thomas Baillod’s acquisition of that workshop in 2026 brought those capabilities closer to the heart of the business. Established suppliers such as Soprod remain important to other collections. BA111OD belongs here for the combination of individual design, local watchmaking expertise, and a willingness to bring more demanding mechanics to a wider audience. Following its development offers another way to understand how an independent house builds its capabilities.
Start exploring: Chapter 7 Skeleton, Chapter 4 Tourbillon, and CHPTR_Δ.
BA111OD: watchmaking expertise and specialist partners
05 | Beauregard
Alexandre Beauregard approaches a watch through the possibilities of stone, shape, and colour. His lapidary work can turn a dial into a sculptural composition, with individually worked elements that demand attention well before anyone mentions the calibre beneath them.
Our encounters with the work, including the Ulysse Saint-Pétersbourg, underline the difference between a decorative motif and an object built around a craft. The stone is fundamental to the design. Beauregard’s expertise gives the watch its identity, while specialist mechanical collaboration makes that identity wearable. For collectors accustomed to assessing a watch through its movement specifications first, this is a rewarding opportunity to reverse the order and spend some time with the front.
Start exploring: Ulysse and the house’s lapidary dials.
TCW: Beauregard Ulysse Saint-Pétersbourg
06 | Bianchet
Bianchet belongs to the more overtly contemporary end of the spectrum. Sculpted cases, exposed mechanics, and flying tourbillons create watches with considerable visual energy. The interest grows when you look beyond the outline to the finishing of the titanium components and the relationship between movement and case.
The house describes internal tourbillon development alongside hand-finishing and assembly in its Swiss atelier. Those are the useful details to investigate, rather than treating an in-house label as the end of the discussion. Bianchet offers another route into high-end watchmaking: architectural, technically ambitious, and comfortable with modern materials. It broadens a guide that might otherwise give the impression that serious craft requires a round case and a restrained dial.
Start exploring: B1.618 flying tourbillons and UltraFino.
07 | Cavasino
Some discoveries begin with a small appointment and stay with you long after the larger presentations have blurred together. Our encounters with Didier Cavasino—from Geneva’s old town to a return meeting over breakfast—have had that quality.
His watches make a close look worthwhile. Open construction, carefully treated movement surfaces, and decorative details bring a personal sensibility to the mechanics. The interest lies in how those elements have been rethought and finished, rather than in assuming that every underlying component originated on one workbench. Cavasino also illustrates one of the pleasures of following a small atelier: you can meet the maker, see the work at different stages, and follow the development of a recognisable approach.
Start exploring: DCR-01 and DCT-02.
08 | Czapek
Czapek gives collectors several doors into independent watchmaking. The Antarctique offers the familiarity of a steel sports watch while introducing a distinctly individual approach to movement design and finishing. More complicated work takes the conversation considerably further.
Our encounters have included Antarctique references in Geneva and the Place Vendôme Complicité Glacier Blue. The latter, developed with Bernhard Lederer, brings two balance systems together through a differential. Its visible mechanics make the collaboration part of the attraction. Czapek is particularly useful for understanding how an independent house can develop a strong identity through both internal expertise and highly specialised partners. The people involved in solving the problem are part of what makes the watch worth knowing.
Start exploring: Antarctique and Place Vendôme Complicité.
TCW: Place Vendôme Complicité Glacier Blue
09 | D. Candaux
Meeting David Candaux makes it difficult to separate the watches from the person behind them. Technical choices become stories about observation, experimentation, and the practical challenge of making an unusual idea function on the wrist.
At Geneva Watch Days, his explanation of the retractable Magic Crown traced an elaborate watchmaking solution back to the familiar action of a clicking pen. That is the sort of detail I enjoy bringing away from an appointment. It gives a mechanism a human origin. His work invites attention to the interaction between case, movement, and wearer, as well as to finishing. The result feels personal because the design choices remain so closely connected to the maker explaining them.
Start exploring: the DC collections and Magic Crown mechanism.
10 | De Bethune
De Bethune has developed a visual language that is difficult to mistake for anyone else’s. Its treatment of form, colour, and movement architecture can make a watch feel futuristic while rewarding the very traditional habit of examining it through a loupe.
Seeing the DB25 Digitale during Geneva Watch Days was a reminder that mechanical ingenuity can change the experience of reading the time as much as the appearance of the movement. De Bethune deserves attention from collectors who enjoy watchmaking that experiments openly. The house’s technical development and finishing give substance to the dramatic presentation. You can admire the result aesthetically, then spend considerably longer learning how it arrived at that result.
Start exploring: DB25, including the Digitale.
11 | Fears
Fears rewards an appreciation for proportion, typography, and the small decisions that make a watch feel settled on the wrist. The Brunswick has enough character to be recognisable without requiring a long explanation, and our time with the collection has shown how much those decisions matter in daily use.
Its move into the Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar opens a different discussion. That watch combines a Sellita base with a Dubois Dépraz calendar module developed for the project. Fears does not need to pretend those specialists are absent. Its contribution is the design and development of the whole, drawing on outside mechanical expertise. It belongs here as an example of independent authorship that does not depend on manufacturing an entire calibre internally.
Start exploring: Brunswick 38 and Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar.
TCW: Fears Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar
12 | Felipe Pikullik
Felipe Pikullik’s Berlin workshop offers the pleasure of watching a maker’s capabilities expand. His earlier work transforming established movements has developed into more extensive internal production, with the Moonphase II marking an important expression of that ambition.
The watch’s sculptural moon gives the eye an immediate destination. Look longer and the architecture and finishing become just as interesting. Our Geneva encounter made a strong impression because the object felt so closely tied to a particular maker’s decisions. Pikullik is worth following for the work already on the table and for the questions it raises about what comes next. An atelier’s development can be one of the most absorbing stories in this field.
Start exploring: Moonphase II and the workshop’s skeletonised work.
13 | GoS
GoS finds much of its character in steel. Pattern-welded Damascus steel produces surfaces whose structure is part of the material itself, bringing the techniques and visual vocabulary of bladesmithing into watchmaking.
Patrik Sjögren’s work combines that material craft with finishing and assembly in Sweden, using specialist mechanical foundations where appropriate. Our encounters have reinforced how much the patterns gain from being seen in changing light. These watches encourage a different kind of inspection from the usual search for a complication or a finishing flourish on a bridge. The dial itself can hold your attention. GoS is a particularly good stop for collectors interested in the meeting of watchmaking and another established craft.
Start exploring: Norrsken and Sarek.
14 | Greubel Forsey
There are moments when someone explains the labour behind a watch and your sense of scale shifts. During our time with Greubel Forsey, Patrick Graells described seven finishes and roughly thirty hours of work on a single bridge. Suddenly, a small component occupied rather more space in the conversation.
This is the rarefied end of the guide. Technical complexity, elaborate construction, and extraordinarily demanding finishing place the watches beyond most collecting budgets. They remain worth studying. Our visit made the vocabulary of hand-finishing feel tangible: individual operations, difficult surfaces, and time spent on details that could easily escape a casual glance. Greubel Forsey offers a useful education in what the upper reaches of watchmaking ask of the people doing the work.
Start exploring: Hand Made and the house’s tourbillon watches.
TCW: what handmade means at Greubel Forsey
15 | Guebly
Guebly brings a collector’s persistence to the business of making a watch. Founded by Adnane Kerd, the house draws together specialist artisans around a particularly exacting idea of how an everyday watch might look and feel. The CH1 Rétrograde gives that ambition a tangible form, combining a sculpted titanium case with a hand-guilloché silver dial and an enamelled retrograde display element.
The names behind those details deserve attention. Voutilainen & Cattin contributes the case work, while Nathalie Jean-Louis brings her expertise to movement decoration and anglage. Maëlle Constant’s enamel work adds another craft to the conversation. Guebly fits this guide because those contributions are central to understanding the watch. Following them leads from an appealing object to the individual skills required to make it. For anyone curious about what a small house can achieve through a carefully assembled network of craftspeople, there is plenty here to investigate.
Start exploring: CH1 Rétrograde.
Guebly: the artisans behind the watches
16 | H. Moser & Cie.
Moser can communicate a great deal with very little on a dial. Colour, surface, and proportion do much of the work, while the mechanics on the other side supply the deeper technical conversation. The Streamliner adds another distinctive element through its case and bracelet design.
Behind that visual restraint sits substantial manufacture expertise, with the wider organisation’s Precision Engineering capabilities extending into regulating components. That matters because Moser’s personality can sometimes draw attention away from its industrial and watchmaking substance. Our experience of the watches belongs in both conversations: the pleasure of their design and the work supporting it. For someone entering this territory from familiar luxury names, Moser offers a compelling combination of wearability and individual character.
Start exploring: Endeavour and Streamliner.
H. Moser & Cie.: the manufacture
17 | Hautlence
Hautlence asks us to reconsider the familiar act of reading the time. Its broad, television-shaped cases provide a stage for displays that move beyond the usual arrangement of two hands and a circle of numerals. There is an architectural quality to the watches, with depth and motion doing as much of the storytelling as the shape of the case.
The Sphere offers a particularly useful introduction. The best time to look at the Hautlence Sphere is a few seconds before the hour. On the right, the retrograde minute hand is nearing the end of its arc. Then it snaps back to zero, and the little sphere on the left comes alive, tumbling on three axes before stopping dead with the next hour facing you. Four bevel gears tucked inside the sphere choreograph the whole thing, though the motion looks so improbable that you could swear the ball has slipped free. It’s over in a blink, which is just long enough to make you wish the next hour would hurry up.
Start exploring: Linear, Sphere, and Vagabonde.
18 | Laine
Torsti Laine makes a strong argument for looking carefully before asking whether a movement began life as an ébauche. Architecture, hand-finishing, and dial work can transform an established foundation into something with a clear personal identity.
Our meeting in Toronto gave us a chance to discuss that work directly. The P37 develops the familiar Peseux 7001 platform through Laine’s own treatment of the movement, while the V38 takes a different route with Vaucher mechanics. The dials provide another reason to linger, particularly where guilloché enters the picture. Laine is an excellent example of why this guide gives weight to the work performed by the maker. The origin of the base calibre is one fact within a much richer account.
Start exploring: P37 and V38.
19 | Laurent Ferrier
Laurent Ferrier’s watches can seem almost disarmingly calm. Their shapes and dials offer an immediate sense of balance, while a closer examination reveals how much work supports that apparent ease.
Visiting the manufacture brought that labour into focus. So did attempting a little perlage myself, an exercise that did rather more for my respect for the craftspeople than for any ambitions I might have had at the bench. Encounters with the Sport Traveller added the perspective of a watch designed to accompany someone through ordinary life. Laurent Ferrier deserves a place here because its watchmaking remains absorbing after the initial aesthetic appeal has become familiar. The details reward attention without constantly demanding it.
Start exploring: Classic, Sport Auto, and Sport Traveller.
TCW: inside the Laurent Ferrier manufacture
20 | Lederer
Bernhard Lederer is interested in problems that can send the rest of us back to the diagrams. His Central Impulse Chronometer uses two gear trains, two escapements, and remontoire mechanisms in pursuit of a particular approach to delivering energy to the regulating system.
Meeting Bernhard and Ewa Lederer in their Beau-Rivage suite gave those technical ideas a welcome personal setting. The watch was extraordinary; the opportunity to ask questions helped make it comprehensible. Lederer belongs among the makers who remind us that mechanical watchmaking still has room for serious investigation. Even if ownership remains a distant prospect, following the reasoning behind a movement can be an immensely satisfying part of the hobby.
Start exploring: Central Impulse Chronometer.
TCW: Bernhard Lederer and the Central Impulse Chronometer
21 | Massena LAB
Massena LAB approaches independent watchmaking through the eye of a collector and the instincts of a creative director. Founded by William Massena, it conceives and develops watches with specialist makers, often drawing on historical design to suggest something worth exploring in the present. The identity lies in the choice of collaborators and in the direction each project takes.
That makes it a useful inclusion in a guide concerned with who contributes what. Massena LAB is a collaborative studio, and the watchmakers’ names remain essential to understanding the finished pieces. Projects with Habring² and Sylvain Pinaud show how that approach can produce quite different results while retaining a collector’s attention to detail. The Chronograph Monopoussoir developed with Pinaud received the chronograph prize at the 2024 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. It provides a particularly good starting point for examining how creative direction and an independent watchmaker’s skills can strengthen one another.
Start exploring: ERWIN LAB01 with Habring² and Chronograph Monopoussoir with Sylvain Pinaud or the Old Soul by Vianney Halter
Massena LAB: philosophy and collaborations
22 | MB&F
MB&F makes collaboration explicit. The “Friends” are central to the project, and its watches show what can happen when a strong creative direction gives specialist watchmakers and designers room to attempt something unusual.
The Horological Machines stretch expectations of what a wristwatch can look like. The Legacy Machines offer a different point of entry, putting dramatic mechanical arrangements into round cases while retaining the same appetite for invention. Our visits and encounters, including time at the M.A.D.Gallery, have made the human side of that work particularly appealing. There is serious craft here, but also humour and curiosity. MB&F is a useful reminder that demanding watchmaking can leave room for play.
In the same breath, we need also discuss M.A.D.Editions—created by Maximilian Büsser and the MB&F team as a more accessible expression of their creative approach.
Start exploring: Legacy Machines and Horological Machines and M.A.D.Editions
23 | MING
MING has developed a recognisable identity through light, geometry, and the relationship between the dial and crystal. Its watches often reveal themselves gradually as the viewing angle changes, which helps explain why an encounter on the wrist can be more informative than a specification sheet.
Design and engineering are rooted in Malaysia, with Swiss production and assembly drawing on specialist partners. That structure makes MING particularly relevant to the definition at the start of this guide. Originality can live in a design team’s research, development, and demanding coordination of suppliers. The questions concern what that team contributes and how successfully the finished watch expresses it. MING gives us plenty to examine on both counts.
Start exploring: the 37-series and Special Projects.
24 | Pequignet
Pequignet deserves attention from anyone whose mental map of mechanical watchmaking stops at the Swiss border. Its work in Morteau centres on the design, development, and assembly of its own calibres, giving the house a substantial technical identity within French watchmaking.
Our encounters with the watches in Geneva, including the Royal Paris, provided a welcome opportunity to see that work directly. The Calibre Royal is an obvious starting point for further investigation. Pequignet’s mechanics also appear elsewhere in this guide through Atelier Wen, illustrating how an independent manufacture can contribute both to its own collections and to another house’s ideas. It is a useful name to know from either side of the caseback.
Start exploring: Royal Paris and watches powered by Calibre Royal.
25 | Pragma
Pragma makes the network behind a watch unusually easy to discuss. The P1 Perseverance brings together a clearly defined design with named specialists, including Chronode for its calibre, Voutilainen & Cattin for cases, and Comblemine for dial-related work.
Its interest in recycled materials adds another dimension to the construction. The value of that story lies in the specifics: which materials, which components, and which workshops perform the work. Our Geneva encounter earned Pragma a place among the smaller names worth following. It also supplies a useful counterweight to vague claims of total internal production. A young house can demonstrate serious authorship by explaining its choices and giving proper credit to the expertise required to realise them.
Start exploring: P1 Perseverance.
26 | Ressence
Ressence begins by reconsidering how we read the time. Its moving display system rearranges the familiar relationship between hands, dial, and indications, creating a face that changes continuously while remaining surprisingly intuitive.
Seeing the Type 11 in person during Watches and Wonders reinforced how important handling is to understanding that idea. The display becomes easier to grasp when you can watch it and interact with the watch. Ressence’s identity lies in the development of its display mechanisms and their integration into the whole object. Some models use oil-filled displays, but that feature does not apply across the collection. The broader achievement is the coherence of the interface: an unusual mechanical solution that serves the wearer’s experience.
Start exploring: Type 1, Type 3, and Type 11.
27 | Sartory-Billard
Sartory-Billard neatly explains why independent watchmaking needs room for nuance. A watch can derive much of its identity from dial making, material experimentation, personalisation, and the relationship between maker and client.
Our coverage of the SB04-E Tantalum and Ruby Platinum explored two very different expressions of that approach. Armand’s hand-engraved tantalum work gives one watch its particular character; the ruby dial takes the other elsewhere. The movements in these models come from La Joux-Perret. More ambitious projects bring additional specialist collaboration. Sartory-Billard’s appeal rests in what happens around—and sometimes to—those mechanical foundations, with the dial often providing the most immediate evidence of the maker’s hand.
Start exploring: SB04-E and SB05.
TCW: Sartory-Billard SB04-E Tantalum and Ruby Platinum
28 | Trilobe
Trilobe has made the absence of conventional hands the foundation of a distinctive way to tell the time. Rotating rings present the indications against fixed markers, requiring a brief adjustment from the wearer before the arrangement starts to feel natural.
Our encounters with the Trente-Deux, followed by further conversation at Geneva Watch Days, added depth to that first impression. The house’s development of its own manufacture capabilities around the X-Nihilo movement makes the story increasingly interesting behind the display as well. Trilobe deserves attention for following an original idea through the less visible work needed to sustain it. The dial introduces the proposition; the mechanics and production explain the commitment behind it.
Start exploring: Trente-Deux and Nuit Fantastique.
29 | Urwerk
Urwerk can make a conventional dial seem like only one of many possible answers. Its satellite indications and unconventional cases ask the wearer to learn a different visual language, while the mechanical execution gives that language substance.
Tea with Felix Baumgartner and Martin Frei at the Hotel d’Angleterre offered a pleasantly human setting for watches that can look as though they arrived from somewhere considerably further away. That contrast is part of the pleasure of meeting independent makers. The object may be extraordinary; the conversation remains a conversation. Urwerk brings watchmaking and industrial design into unusually close contact, and its work rewards anyone prepared to spend a little time learning how to read it.
Start exploring: the satellite-display collections.
30 | Vanguart
Vanguart explores movement, depth, and interaction with an architectural approach to the wristwatch. Its Black Hole and Orb offer different expressions of that interest, giving the mechanics a central role in the visual experience.
Our conversation with Thierry Fischer and subsequent encounters in Geneva helped place those dramatic objects in the context of the people developing them. The Orb’s winding system is one of the details that makes closer investigation worthwhile. Vanguart sits firmly towards the elusive end of this guide, but price and rarity are only part of its relevance. It belongs because of the ideas being attempted and the technical and finishing work required to turn them into functioning watches.
Start exploring: Black Hole and Orb.
TCW: a conversation with Vanguart’s Thierry Fischer
Keep following the questions
A list like this should leave a few tabs open. Perhaps you want to learn how anOrdain makes a dial, understand what Lederer is trying to achieve, or see what MING does when light reaches a watch from another angle. That is a good outcome.
The names differ enormously in scale, price, and approach. The pleasure linking them is the opportunity to get closer to the work. Meet the maker if you can. Ask who produces the movement, what happens inside the workshop, and which part proved most difficult. Try the watch on. Sometimes the thing that stays with you will be a complication. Sometimes it will be a surface you had previously overlooked.
My interest in tool watches has survived all of this perfectly well. It has simply acquired some company. I can appreciate a Marathon for the job it does and still find myself in a Geneva hotel suite, trying to understand why a watchmaker has spent years solving a problem most people will never know exists.
There is a great deal of pleasure in that sort of exploration. You do not need to know where it will lead before you start.
Check out The Ultimate Watch Buying Guide
About the author
Brent Robillard is a writer, educator, craftsman, and watch enthusiast. He is the author of four novels. You can follow him on Instagram.
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