Despite market dominance and skyrocketing prices of powerhouse companies such as Rolex, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet, a handful of independent masters eschew the branded approach. These select few dedicate themselves to old-world artisanship that elevates their work to another stratosphere of rarity and exclusivity.
Throughout history, horology has been advanced by visionary pioneers, such as Abraham-Louis Breguet —inventor of the tourbillon, among other technical innovations—whose influence passes through generations.
Breguet’s work inspired the late George Daniels, a legendary British watchmaker hailed as one of the greatest of the modern age. Daniels’ famous coaxial escapement is regarded as one of the most important innovations of modern watchmaking. Daniels mentored his fellow Brit Roger W. Smith, who produces only 10 to 15 handmade watches per year, advancing Daniels’ work and exploring new watchmaking territory.
Working by hand in his atelier in the Vallée de Joux, Switzerland, Philippe Dufour also references historical complicated masterpieces, staying true to classicism and expressing the pinnacle of the craft, especially when it comes to finishing, which elevates a mere mechanical watch to a work of art.
Philippe Dufour taught the world what truly great movement finishing is,” says Keith Davis, head of watches at Christie’s Americas. “As a result, he has indirectly trained the collector community on how to view movement quality, by establishing a benchmark for everyone to compare to moving forward and even comparing to the past.”
Last summer, Dufour’s exclusive secondary dealer, the e-commerce site A Collected Man, sold a Grande et Petite Sonnerie, produced for the Sultan of Brunei in 1995, for $7.63 million, setting a record for the most expensive watch by an independent producer.
Philippe Dufour no doubt had profound impacts on the Swiss watchmaking industry,” says Paul Boutros, head of watches for the Americas and senior vice president at Phillips auction house in New York. “In 1992, he introduced the world’s first Grande et Petite Sonnerie wristwatch; then in 1996, he introduced the world’s first wristwatch with two escapements—the Duality.”
Boutros adds that the Duality influenced the up-and-coming François- Paul Journe to pursue his dream of creating a two-escapement “Resonance” wristwatch. Journe has credited Daniels and his book The Art of Breguet for inspiring him to assemble his first watch, a tourbillon. His first watchmaking milestone was 1991’s Tourbillon Souverain, an unprecedented tourbillon wristwatch that incorporated a remontoir d’égalité, a constant-force mechanism that traces its origin to John Harrison’s famous H2 marine chronometer from the late 1730s.
Perhaps the most well-known of Journe’s groundbreaking inventions is the Chronomètre à Résonance, unveiled in 2000. The notion of building a wristwatch based on the phenomenon of resonance was planted in 1982 when Journe worked on restoring the Breguet No. 3177 clock in Paris’ Musée des Arts et Métiers. Journe brought a contemporary view to the concept, using two balance wheels positioned close together so that they synchronize as their frequencies align.
At a Christie’s Dubai auction in March, a Chronomètre à Résonance Black Label sold for $403,200, while last December, Phillips New York sold a 2005 limited edition pink gold Tourbillon Souverain for $718,200, exceeding its estimate of $150,000 to $300,000.
The Tourbillon Souverain, Chronomètre à Résonance, and Centigraphe Souverain, the first watch to measure a timescale of 1/100th of a second using a 3Hz escapement, remain in production at Journe’s atelier in Geneva.
At 35, Rexhep Rexhepi, who also cites Daniels and Dufour as muses, represents a new generation of independents who take an artisanal approach to contemporary watchmaking.
In 1998, the Kosovo native fled his war-torn country for Geneva to join his father. At 15, he became an apprentice at Patek Philippe, which then hired him full time. In 2012, he launched his own Geneva atelier, Akrivia, named for the Greek word for precision.
In 2018, Rexhepi introduced the Chronomètre Contemporain (CC1) with his name on the dial and the movement signed Akrivia. “The CC1 was a tour de force time-only watch inside a very traditional round case,” Boutros says. “The quality of the case, dial, and movement finishing is as good as it gets.”
Rexhepi followed up with the Chronomètre Contemporain 2 in 2021—the unique piece sold at the Only Watch charity auction for 800,000 Swiss francs (US$859,506). “These CC1 and CC2 watches were inspired by Philippe Dufour’s Simplicity watch,” Boutros says. “He also took inspiration for their case design from Patek Philippe’s most sought-after vintage watches—the references 2497 and 2499.”
While today’s virtuosos stand apart for their commitment to the ancient arts of the craft, it’s no secret these techniques are becoming increasingly lost in an age of high-tech industrialization.
This spurred Dufour to team up with leading independent watchmakers Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey of Greubel Forsey to establish the “Le Garde Temps-Naissance d’une Montre” (“Birth of a Watch”) project in 2009. The concept was to train a student in watchmaking techniques to create a timepiece entirely made by hand and using only historical manual machines.
The main goal was to pass on their acquired knowledge to future generations. After years of toil, they unveiled their first finished piece, “Montre École” (“School Watch”), in 2016. It was auctioned soon after at Christie’s in Hong Kong for US$1.46 million to help fund current and future projects.
But Greubel Forsey has never been content to simply preserve ancient watchmaking crafts; it set out to advance them in contemporary pieces with avant-garde movement innovations.
With this year’s pivotal Double Balancier Convexe, Greubel Forsey managed to combine it all in a bold, contemporary package that taps into the current craze for sport watches.
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