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…
Company profile: Fendi began its story in Rome in 1925, a fur and leather shop run by Adele and Edoardo Fendi. From 1946 on, ther five daughters Paola, Anna, Franca, Carla and Alda joined the business. Anna’s daughter Silvia Venturini Fendi joined the company in 1994 and is now Creative Director for Accessories and Men’s…
Company profile: Limes was founded recently, though its roots date back to 1924, when Karl Ickler founded a company named simply Ickler in Pforzheim, Germany. Pforzheim’s importance as a centre for watches and jewellery runs back to much earlier, to 1767 when the Grand Duke Karl Friedrich of Baden promoted the foundation of a watch…
Brief profile of Tiffany & Co.: The young Charles Lewis Tiffany borrowed $1,000 from his father to set up a “stationery and fancy goods emporium” with his friend John B. Young in New York, at 259 Broadway in New York, 1837. They quickly developed a reputation for their original jewellery and silverware. One of their…
Brief company profile: Ateliers deMonaco was born as a tribute to a movement, and two years later, its founders decided to dedicate it to a city. The principal motive for its foundation was a minute repeater movement created over the course of two years by Pim Koeslag, a Dutch watchmaker born in 1981, who was…
Breitling company profile Breitling is one of the few remaining independent Swiss watch brands. It specializes in technical watches, and in particular aviation (Navitimer) and diving (SuperOcean) timepieces, and all its watches have chronometer-certified movements. Its chronograph calibres are all made in-house. Founded in 1884 The 1884 that appears below the Breitling logo is the…
Company profile: Ressence was founded in 2010 by Benoît Mintiens in Antwerp, Belgium. The name is derived from the words “Renaissance” and “essence”. Mintiens is an industrial designer, whose curriculum includes work on Eurostar and SNCF trains, first-class interiors for Air France, and vacuum cleaners for LG. He first encountered watch design in 2004 when…
Company profile: Roger Dubuis is a brand that is proud of its relatively short history, just over 20 years. This enables it to make watches that are totally original, because they don’t have to look back to precedents back in the company archive. In many of their watches, you get the impression that they are…
Company profile: Anonimo has an unusual history. The brand traces its origins back to Giovanni Panerai in Florence, and their watches have some features similar to Panerai timepieces, such as a tradition of diving watches, a patented crown protector, large chunky dials, and simple, bold design. While Panerai has moved to in-house movement and high…
Company profile: Cartier was founded in Paris in 1847 by Louis-François Cartier, who took over the jewellery workshop where he had trained, and specialized in jewellery and fashion accessories. Business went well, and he became the favourite jeweller amongst the French aristocracy. His son Alfred became a partner in 1872, and was running the shop…
Company profile: Oris is an independent company with a long history and a marked penchant for innovation. Today its slogan is “real watches for real people,” which can be translated as mechanical watches at accessible prices. It’s an interesting brand, moving progressively towards greater vertical integration, and it has designed and built some of its…
Company profile: Frederique Constant was founded in 1988, by Aletta Bax and Peter Stas They launched their first collection in 1992, comprising six models fitted with Swiss movements. The company developed its manufacturing capacity and it has been designing and making its own movements since 2004. The Frederique Constant mission is that of accessible luxury,…
Company profile: Emile Chouriet was founded in 1998 by Jean Depéry. He was born into a family of notaries, but abandoned tradition, studied micro-engineering at the University of Neuchâtel and embarked on a career in the production of watch components. He founded his own company in 1998, naming it after Emile Chouriet, a 17th century…
Company profile: Manufacture Contemporaine du Temps makes very complicated watches, and its company history is also rather complicated. it was founded in 2007 by Denis Giguet, a watch designer who had 20 years of experience in the trade. He had been at Rolex for six years, and had directed the Harry Winston watchmaking division for…
Company profile: Vulcain began as a workshop founded in 1858 by Maurice Ditisheim, in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He made fine pocket watches, and the workshop expanded to become Manufacture Ditisheim. Its complication watches received prizes at several World Fairs. The brand Vulcain first appeared in 1894, registered by Ditisheim in 1900. The brand’s fame increased considerably…
Company profile: There are lots of watch brands of relatively recent foundation who have purchased the right to use the name of a historic watchmaker or a long defunct company. It gives them some instant history, and some even go so far as to put “Since 1860” or whenever on the dials of their new…
Company profile: Pierre Dubois comes from a family that has been involved in watchmaking for four generations. Dubois-Dépraz was founded by Marcel Dépraz in 1901, and today the company, run by Pierre’s two brothers Jean-Philippe and Pascal, make some of the most interesting complications on the market, nearly always for other watch companies. Pierre Dubois…
Company profile: Romain Gauthier, born in 1975 in Le Sentier, is not a trained watchmaker. However, he grew up surrounded by the trade, because his mother worked for a large watch brand, and Le Sentier is in Vallée de Joux, the heartland of fine Swiss watchmaking. He studied precision mechanics and obtained a diploma in…
Company profile: Fortis was founded in Grenchen, Switzerland (Certina is another brand operating in the same location) by Walter Vogt in 1912 and has been operating without interruption ever since. The Harwood watch (named for John Harwood, a watchmaker with a workshop on the Isle of Man who patented a self-winding movement in 1924) was…
Company profile: Bremont is a British brand with a clear ambition: to revive British watchmaking. Their dials are not marked “Swiss made” but “London”, and they are endeavouring to gradually increase the proportion of the watchmaking processes performed in the UK. At the moment, cases, straps and leather packaging are made in England, watches are…