Stories

Alongside his own Sarpaneva watches, Stepan Sarpaneva founded S.U.F Helsinki in 2003 for steel watches that are easier to wear every day, with limited editions that honour Finnish pioneers.

The watchmaker Daniel Roth founded DANIEL ROTH in 1988 with a tourbillon in a double-ellipse case, a shape that became the brand’s signature and returns in today’s Extra Plat.

Gérald Genta spent years designing watches for other brands before founding his own house in 1969, and two of his former watchmakers now supervise its revival.

After learning at Swiss workbenches, Stepan Sarpaneva came home to Helsinki to make his own watches, built around a moon with a face of slight melancholy.

Paris watchmaker Théo Auffret and entrepreneur Guillaume Laidet make SpaceOne watches in the style of the 1960s space age, with complications developed in Auffret’s own workshop.

Jacob Arabo came to the United States from the former USSR with his family, trained in jewellery and built Jacob & Co. into a house of jewellery and complicated watches.

Three friends who had spent their careers creating for other watch brands founded kollokium in 2020, to make watches with no inherited history, one project at a time.

After twenty years leading Gagà Milano, Ruben Tomella teamed up with his friend, the designer Mo Coppoletta, to make watches drawn in London and built in Switzerland.

William Massena spent decades collecting watches and running a collectors’ forum before founding Massena LAB in 2018, to take his own ideas to independent watchmakers.

In 1976 a Swiss house showed a mechanical watch read from the side, through a prism; in 2024 three enthusiasts reclaimed its name and patents and started again.

The brothers Mohamed and Mahmood Algharbi began as watch collectors, and from a head office in A’ali, Bahrain, they now design watches that fit the local taste.

Michel Parmigiani restored rare pieces for the Sandoz family long before the family’s foundation helped him launch Parmigiani Fleurier, in the valley where he grew up, in 1996.