Berthet, French watchmaking company founded in 1888, celebrates its 130th anniversary this year. In addition to making its own watches, it supplies components to many other watch brands. The characteristics of its timepieces – hand-wound movements, original complications, in-house skeletonization, affordable prices – make Berthet a distinctive brand with a powerful identity. We had the…
Company profile: Berthet was founded by Joseph Berthet, son of a teacher, born in Savoie. He learnt watchmaking in Switzerland over the course of about 12 years before returning to Charmauvillers, close to the Swiss border, in 1877, setting up his own watchmaking workshop in 1888. He was joined by his brother and his three…
The Orbis Régulateur H43 by Berthet is a 43 mm watch with a hand-wound movement, modified in-house to provide the regulator function.
The Agilis by Berthet is based on a classic hand-wound movement that is modified in-house to create the retrograde minutes display at the top of the dial. Berthet perform an operation similar to that performed by Vincent Calabrese with his company Nouvelle Horlogerie Calabrese: they use standard ETA/Unitas movements and modify them to do something…
The watch named Vintage, reference H46, by Berthet is in the early aviator style, with large luminescent Art Deco style numerals, a hand-wound movement, and an attractive price.
Arte Noir by Berthet is a skeleton watch, 42.5 mm in diameter and 11.9 mm thick, with a hand-wound 6498 movement that is skeletonized in-house, to a design by house engineers Gérard and William Berthet. The watchmakers use a range of techniques to remove parts of the bridges, including CNC micro-machining, laser cutting and micro-cutting…
One of the trends at Baselworld 2016 is for so-called Heritage watches, based on pocket watch designs from the early 20th century. These often have bold Arabic numerals in gold and a small seconds subdial at 6 o’clock; several brands have introduced pilot’s watches in the same pattern. There are some traditional brands that have…