Three independent watchmakers that deserve to be more appreciated
Borna BošnjakEvery watch enthusiast’s journey is slightly different, but when looking at most people’s collecting evolution, I’m sure we’d notice a pattern. How many of you started with a Casio, then got your first “nice” watch that was a Tissot or Seiko in your mid-to-late teens? Naturally, this opened the doors to the rest of the watch world, and you followed it up with a Longines or Tudor before splashing the cash on something like a Rolex, Omega or Cartier. Before too long, you realised the rabbit hole goes way deeper, past the Holy Trinity and its orbitals, all the way down to greats like Daniels and Dufour. Seeing as you would’ve undoubtedly encountered numerous grail-worthy creations on this journey, it’s easy to simply glance over certain names, or completely miss others. To those who believe they’ve reached the horological rabbit hole bottom, if such a thing exists, you will have likely come across the names on this list at some point. But if you didn’t give them another look, I hope this serves as a reminder that there’s horological satisfaction to be found off the beaten path.
Romain Gauthier
Romain Gauthier’s ethos can be summed up as avant-garde takes on watchmaking solutions of old. Having cut his teeth working for François Golay, Gauthier started his eponymous brand nearly two decades ago with the introduction of the Prestige HM. The watch sported an in-house movement with a unique crown design, and introduced what would go on to become the Gauthier brand signatures. Aside from the yin and yang-shaped screw heads and circular wheel spokes, Romain Gauthier is certainly in the conversation for having some of the best finishing in the business, period.
The watch that shows this best is the Logical One, equipped with a new take on an antiquated solution of delivering constant force to the escapement, the fusée and chain. Rather than winding the chain onto a fusée cone, the Logical One uses a short chain of perfectly black-polished links with ruby rollers, decreasing the friction normally found in such a solution and vastly improving reliability. Alongside the power delivery developments, Romain Gauthier also improved on the Swiss lever escapement that most mechanical watches use nowadays. The invention of a triangular escape lever that replaces a traditional pallet fork improves balance amplitude and shock resistance.
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And that’s only touching on Gauthier’s technological developments. The image above is admittedly just a render, but a quick look through macro aficionado Horomariobro’s Instagram reveals that the finishing is perhaps even better in real life. Other than his own watches, Romain Gauthier also makes the most of his training as a precision machining engineer, producing the most challenging components to make for other watchmaking brands. Gauthier’s accomplishments have earned him a minor investment from Chanel, the fashion giant borrowing the watchmaker’s expertise for some of its own projects, too, like the recent Monsieur de Chanel Superleggera.
Beat Haldimann
There are old watchmaking maisons, and then there are really old watchmaking maisons. While Vacheron Constantin can trace its history back to 1755, the Haldimann name’s first recorded mention in relation to watchmaking starts more than a hundred years before that in 1642. Three centuries later, in 1964, Beat Haldimann was born, and would go on to achieve horological greatness. He founded Haldimann Horology in 1991, priding himself on using only traditional methods and handheld tools to make his watches from the very beginning. If you were ever worried about your high-end independent watches actually being handmade, Haldimann if your man – his workshop doesn’t even have a CNC machine.
Haldimann’s life work centres around escapements – pun fully intended here as his wristwatches quite literally only feature centrally mounted regulating organs. Those would come later, though, as Haldimann’s first horological revelation came in the year 2000, with the development of the Haldimann completely detached escapement. This development of the Graham and Strasser escapements was designed for use in clocks, employing three magnets to connect the pallet lever and impulse spring and delivering an accuracy of a tenth of a second per day. Unfortunately, I am not smart enough to dumb down the exact way it works in just a sentence or two, but for any nerds like myself, I implore you to prep a cup of your favourite beverage, and read Haldimann’s manifesto.
Leaving clock escapements behind, Haldimann introduced what would become his most recognisable model, the H1 Flying Lyra, in 2002. The huge centrally mounted tourbillon dominated the dial, with each component finished to an enviable standard. Only a few years later, Haldimann would follow this up with the H2 Flying Resonance, this time equipping the central regulator with two flying tourbillons connected via a remontoir d’égalité.
Beat Haldimann’s accomplishments were recognised in 2009, as he was awarded the Gaïa Prize for Craftsmanship and Creation. This particular prize doesn’t get as much recognition as say, the GPHG as it’s not exactly product-focused, but if you think of the GPHG awards as the horological Oscars, then the Gaïa Prize is the equivalent of a Nobel Prize.
Vianney Halter
The moment you find out that Vianney Halter is just as much of a sci-fi nerd as he is a supremely talented watchmakers, his horological creations immediately make more sense. Like many other independents, Halter excelled at watchmaking school before putting in the hours at a restoration workshop. His first entry into high-end watchmaking would come in 1989, working for Techniques Horlogères Appliquées (THA), that was founded by François-Paul Journe and Denis Flageollet. Numerous tourbillons, minute repeaters, perpetual calendars, and complicated chronographs left the workshop, heading for the display cases of some of the world’s most renowned brands, notably including Breguet for its Sympathique clock and Cartier for the legendary Tortue Monopoussoir CPCP.
Halter left THA (now owned by Carl F. Bucherer and by extent, Rolex) to create Manufacture Janvier in 1994, named after Antide Janvier, an 18th century watchmaker to Louis XVI known for his celestial complications. Much like THA, Manufacture Janvier would continue to produce complications for other brands, but the story clearly doesn’t end there.
The first watch with Halter’s name on it came out in 1998 at the Basel fair, and it was none other than the Antiqua. The steampunky perpetual calendar wonder was envisioned in collaboration with American designer Jeff Barnes, featuring an instantaneous-change mechanism based on the Lemania 8810. Its porthole design, knobbly crown, and lug design will go on to inspire the Classic and Trio models, but people often forget that Halter is an expert in high-end complications.
After the worldwide financial crisis of 2009, Halter withdrew from watchmaking for some time, returning in force with the Deep Space Tourbillon, winning the Innovation Prize at the GPHG in 2013. Perhaps his greatest achievement of horological complexity came in 2021 with the Deep Space Resonance, fitting the tri-axial tourbillon with two stacked balance wheels with hairsprings connected to a common bridge, making the most of the natural phenomenon of resonance to improve chronometric performance.
While the Antiqua pretty much defines Vianney Halter as a watchmaker, and his resonance work describes his resurgence, I can’t not mention the Harry Winston Opus 3. Not only is it my personal favourite complication, but it was also so out there for its time, and never really reproduced. It was created by Vianney Halter on Max Büsser’s behest, and alongside the jumping hours and minutes, it also counted down the last four seconds in the top left display. This pseudo-jumping seconds display was notoriously unreliable, and it took Renaud et Papi to finish the project. Sure, Journe has the continually running jumping seconds of the Vagabondage, but I feel like the quirkiness of the Opus 3 will remain unique, never to be made again.