Indie watch brands show creative edge at Baselworld 2017

Dec 31 , 2017

Max Büsser of MB&F, collaborated with L’Epee on the Octopod, an eight-legged mechanical timely creature, which doubles up as a kinetic sculpture. Its gimballed head features a clock reminiscent of a ship’s chronometers.

Fiona Krüger’s design recipe seems to be throwing memento mori, haute horlogerie and a Mexican wrestler into a blender and serving it up cool

Many independent brands raised pulses in the watch scene when they showed exciting pieces at the newLes Ateliers area at Baselworld this year.

Fiona Krüger, the Scottish designer in the limelight since 2013 for her mechanical, automatic Swiss-made skull watches and other designs for Speake-Marin, Ulysse Nardin and Fabergé, has taken another step into collaborative efforts.

Her new collection features guilloche dials from masterful Finnish watchmaker Kari Voutilainen. With strong colours, using classical techniques to sketch an image, her design recipe seems to be throwing memento mori, haute horlogerie and a Mexican wrestler into a blender and serving it up cool. The Petit Skull collection is smaller than her earlier creations.

The watches, which are priced from 13,000 Swiss francs (HK$101,585) upwards, are not discreet – that was never Krüger’s intention. “Traditional retailers that are not proactive find it hard – they have to evolve or they will fall behind,” she warns.

1941 Remontoire Constant Force with a red dial by Grönefeld Brothers, which features an eight-second remontoire.

Another brand dialled-up by Voutilainen is the Grönefeld Brothers. Their 1941 Remontoire Constant Force features an eight-second remontoire. This miniaturised, complex system, inspired by the church clocks attended to by their father and grandfather, ensures synchronicity with consistent amplitude and rate by releasing an equally strong force which winds a small hairspring connected to the escapement every eight seconds.

The watch won the Dutch brothers’ their second Grand Prix d’Horlogerie in November 2016, and it is now available with these colourful guilloche dials. Prices start from 48,000 Swiss francs. If you want a special enamelled, engine-turned dial, you will need to add at least another 8,000 Swiss francs.

Romain Gauthier showed that haute horlogerie is not only about what innovations you make. How you make them is equally important. The time-only Insight Micro-Rotor may be mechanically simpler than his 2013 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève winner Logical One, but the execution is breathtaking – with 95 per cent of the parts from his own manufacture. The price? In platinum 88,000 Swiss francs, which would outdo the red gold version in any beauty contest.