uropa Star: Rather than proceed chronologically, starting 40 years ago – we’ll come back to those early days –, we’d like to begin with you, Shona Taine, if we may, the youngest person here and the first woman to be accepted, just recently, as an AHCI member at the tender age of 27. Shona, what made you want to join this group of white males, many of whom were making watches before you were born?

Shona Taine: It still seems slightly unreal, finding myself among people whose work has always left me in awe. I’d always imagined that joining the AHCI was something you might do towards the end of your career, so there was a bit of a misunderstanding to begin with. John-Mikaël Flaux [a French watchmaker and automaton-maker, AHCI member since 2021] encouraged me to join, him and David Candaux. We were sharing a fondue and they told me I should apply. Again, I find it incredible to have been accepted and be part of this, to find myself at the heart of watchmaking. It’s an extraordinary privilege and a form of recognition, particularly as I’m only at the beginning of my career.

Shona Taine

Sylvain Pinaud, you were also recently inducted into the Académie, just two years ago. What does it represent for you?

Sylvain Pinaud: I’d say things have changed a lot compared with 40 years ago. The Académie’s first generation were mercenaries. They blazed a trail, they cleared the way. It’s thanks to them that so many of today’s young watchmakers want to be independent. Anyway, I’m pretty much the new guy, having joined two years ago, but I was working well before then. I am 45, you know. I didn’t dare go it alone straight away, I felt I wasn’t yet in that league, but attitudes have changed and today’s younger generations are maybe too quick to say, ‘hey! let’s go for it’, when before it was a very different story. The thing that convinced me was the support I got from Vianney Halter, who helped me make my first watch as an independent. Helping each other out, sharing knowledge, having conversations, it’s what the Académie is about. What it’s still about!

Sylvain Pinaud

Svend Andersen, was the mutual support that Sylvain describes one of the fundamental reasons you founded the AHCI with Vincent Calabrese?

Svend Andersen: If we go back to the Académie’s early days, we’d just come through the quartz crisis and were witnessing something of a revival of interest in mechanical watches in the early 1980s, among the Italians in particular. Vincent Calabrese came to see me one day. I already had a bit of a name among Italian collectors, mainly thanks to my clock in a bottle, and Vincent said either we join forces or get eaten alive by bankers. That’s how we started. We placed notices in the international press and requests came flooding in…

Svend Andersen

And that’s how the Académie got its first members? Out of a form of resistance and a notice in the paper? Vincent Calabrese, is that how you remember it?

Vincent Calabrese: Things have evolved considerably since then, but initially we set out to form a group of independent watchmakers who sensed that they were going to be swallowed up by the industrial “mafia”. Brands never said who was behind their inventions and products. The Académie was an opportunity for an artisan. The only way we could resist, the only way we could take control of our future was by banding together. Something really magnificent happened 40 years ago…

Vincent Calabrese

Antoine Preziuso: It’s true, it was all word of mouth to begin with, there was no internet. Most of the time, we’d just happen upon each other. For example, I met a lone watchmaker in Hong Kong, Kiu Tai Yu. He had made the first Chinese tourbillon, just him, by himself. And he joined the Académie. There was a kind of audition in front of our peers, we’d present our watch, see each other at the Basel fair, we could share ideas, offer criticism, talk to each other, share our passion, co-opt each other… There were no barriers in terms of nationality or anything like that. It’s how I was “discovered”. Prior to that, it was just me in my corner.

Antoine Preziuso

François-Paul Journe: I came after the two founders. I met Svend Andersen in 1985, at Drouot in Paris. He told me about an exhibition the following year, so I went. There was a bit of everything, George Daniels, always serious, and others who were more quirky. I watched and observed. By the second year, there was Renaud Papi, for example, who made skeletons. I’d finished my first piece and two years later they came looking for me and I joined in 1987. We were all head down, pedalling in the same direction, and for not much! I kept showing the same piece and never sold a thing, but I was happy because I felt I was broadening my horizons and discovering Swiss watchmaking.

François-Paul Journe

Vincent Calabrese: Back then, we had to do everything on traditional machines, which wasn’t that easy, so the majority were making skeletons or fairly straightforward things. The Académie wouldn’t accept today what we accepted then. Also, there wasn’t necessarily the clientele that there is today. The first to make an entire movement himself was François-Paul.

©Europa Star Archives

©Europa Star Archives

Philippe Dufour, you joined a few years later, in 1992. What did the Académie represent for you and why join?

Philippe Dufour: I joined with my first product, the Grande Sonnerie, which I’d worked on for two and a half years. I was on my own in Vallée de Joux with very few outside contacts. As others have mentioned, there’s more interaction now, members talk to each other, offer each other advice, whereas in my day, we’d see each other at Basel but nothing between times. I’m glad to hear the new generation has much more contact than we ever had.

Philippe Dufour

Did you ever feel you were in competition, that your clients were your clients?

Antoine Preziuso: [Our watches] reflect our personalities. We’re all slightly different. We each have a style that we express in our watches.

Indeed. It’s actually quite remarkable to see how the AHCI brings together such very different forms of watchmaking. If we were to simplify to the extreme, on the one hand there is a kind of classicism or neo-classicism, with Philippe Dufour and François-Paul Journe, to name just two, and on the other, a more disruptive approach, with Vianney Halter and Felix Baumgartner, again to name but two. There is no AHCI “school”, stylistically speaking at least. Fundamentally, what unites you, apart from your independence? A love of what you do?

Felix Baumgartner: For me, it’s simple. Independent watchmaking means having your own workshop, with your own ideas, things you want to create and express, using your own means, and exhibiting together. That’s what drew me to the AHCI and the reason I joined in 1997. It was an extraordinary possibility, to be part of a shared space – one that journalists already appreciated. In fact I have a question, too. Who came up with the name “Académie”? Because it’s spot-on.

Felix Baumgartner

Svend Andersen: I did.

Vincent Calabrese: The name? That was my idea. (everyone laughs) In ancient Greece, an academy was where people went to share knowledge.

Felix Baumgartner: OK, well, we’re not going to get an answer today! What matters to me is that the Académie was created as a group of individualists who joined forces, who supported each other to have a space where they could show their work together.

Philippe Dufour: The driving force was to show your products. If it had been just me, I could never have shown my watch at Basel. It all started from there.

François-Paul Journe: One day, a certain Heinz Heimann got in touch. He wanted seven of us to work on a collection, the “Goldpfeil” project. We talked it over and decided it wouldn’t be possible, there were too many individual personalities. It’s never been a community as such, it’s always been every man selling for himself. We might occasionally go out for a meal, after a general meeting, but the rest of the time there’s never been a sense of fraternity. Not like, say, a group of freemasons. No-one takes charge, there’s no organiser. Every one of us is 100% an individual, under a shared umbrella, with all our interesting differences. We’re not all marching in the same direction all the time, which is a good thing.

©Europa Star Archives

©Europa Star Archives

Antoine Preziuso: What do we share? My answer is simple: a loupe, tweezers and a screwdriver. Real watchmakers.

Vianney Halter: We’re all of an ilk. We all wanted to make a life for ourselves in the world that measures time, watches or objects that measure the passage of time. Fundamentally, this is what connects us. For the founders, Basel was the only way to become visible in that world, by joining forces because individually it was simply impossible. It was entirely pragmatic, a matter of hard cash to try and get by. It’s about strength in numbers. It hadn’t even crossed my mind.Philippe Dufour saw what I was doing and said, listen, there’s a small group of us exhibiting in Basel and we need guys like you, it’ll give us a bit more visibility, help the group move forward. Philippe’s view was that the more we could show different things, the more we’d get noticed. It makes good sense, for the one who has the chance to show his products and for the others exhibiting alongside him.

Vianney Halter

Would it be true to say the Académie was, at that time, the only way an independent could hope to get by whereas it’s a very different environment today, with social media and so many other opportunities to market yourself? And yet the Académie still has a role to play, for Shona, for example.

Vincent Calabrese: There are new brands popping up every day. A lot of people are taking advantage of watchmaking’s success to start making watches themselves.

Vincent Calabrese

François-Paul Journe: They do it because they have a backer putting in money, and even if they lose that money, it keeps things turning, it helps.

Vianney Halter: You’re right, because plenty of people are interested in watches and even with companies constantly appearing and disappearing, there’s money circulating and that benefits us, too. At the same time, how someone joins the Académie has changed. It used to be a case of “the more the merrier” but not any more. Now you have to prove your worth, because we don’t want to be polluted by “parasites”, sorry to use that word. You must make a formal application, have two sponsors who examine how you work, there’s an entire process before you can be accepted.

Svend Andersen: The exact criteria are to be a watchmaker, be independent, be capable of producing a horological construction, building it by yourself, and present it in the appropriate manner. Also, the two sponsors check that the candidate is genuinely independent and doesn’t have any skeletons in the cupboard.

Svend Andersen

So a pure watch designer couldn’t apply?

Vianney Halter: If they spend five years at the bench, making and building their own watch, then we couldn’t turn them away.

Felix Baumgartner: What I find interesting is that initially, the Académie’s raison d’être was to live or die as a watchmaker, and if you wanted to live as an independent watchmaker and show your work, the only way you could do that was through the AHCI. Now there are all sorts of opportunities - social media, contacts - to meet other watchmakers, who don’t need the Académie, which means we need to give a new purpose, new depth to the Académie. That’s our most interesting topic for discussion.

Felix Baumgartner

It’s true, as someone on the outside, you hear comments that the Académie is outdated, that it’s no longer needed…

François-Paul Journe: The Académie will reach a pinnacle the day it decides to present the Grand Prix de l’Académie to this or that brand, for one of its products that year. And I can guarantee you that Cartier or whoever will be there to collect their award, sheepishly no doubt, but delighted to do so. We need to put the Académie back at the summit and reward industrial brands when they do a good job.

François-Paul Journe

(laughing and nodding in agreement)

Whereas currently, the opposite is true. Big brands – Louis Vuitton, Cartier and others – are the ones handing out prizes to independents or looking to work with them. If we had to sum up the Académie’s history, first the industry ignored you, then it came sniffing round you at Basel, then it took your ideas and then it wanted to enlist your services, collaborate with you, for the Harry Winston Opus series, in particular: to swallow you up, in a way. On the other hand, you could say you’ve come out on top, as collectors today swear by the independents!

François-Paul Journe: Yes, but to come back to the Opus series, for example, and I made the first one in 2001, we had no means of communication back then. The Opus, launched by Max Büsser, were a really important sounding board.

Vincent Calabrese: The Académie’s first exhibition was in 1985 at Musée du Château des Monts in Le Locle. After that, for the next three years we were given a free space at Basel. Recognition came quite quickly.

Philippe Dufour: The Académie started a trend of showing the inside of the watch, and the big brands who love us so much said “shit, we’d better show off the inside of our watches, too”, at which point they realised they weren’t actually that nice to look at. So they set about reinventing certain professions, chamfering and finishing, except they had no-one on the payroll with the necessary skills because they’d all been made redundant. That’s when all these small workshops opened up, doing chamfering or black polishing or whatever for the big brands so that their watches were presentable. And all that thanks to who? Thanks to the independents!

Philippe Dufour

Antoine Preziuo: We were actually the first influencers. The Académie, as a platform, proclaimed that the principal element of a watch is the movement!

Ludovic Ballouard, we haven’t heard from you, yet. What does the Académie mean to you? You had a previous life…

Ludovic Ballouard: To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t desperate to join. It came about because of this guy who wanted to sell my watches. He loved my work but told me “I can’t take you on because you’re not in the Académie.” So, I had a look at what this Académie was all about and saw “Horloger”, “Créateur” and “Indépendant”, and I said to myself, well, you’re a watchmaker, you’re a creator, you’re independent, you can belong there. I found two sponsors and there you go, I was a candidate. Then I called the guy back and told him I’d applied to join. That was in 2013 and he agreed to sell my watches.

Ludovic Ballouard

I took part in the Académie’s exhibitions and showed my watches at Basel, which I could never even have dreamed of doing before. But that was all. I told myself, OK, that’s it, I’ve applied to join, and the years went by and five years later Konstantin Chaykin, who was president at one point, said, “Ludo, just how long have you been a candidate, it’s time you were a member.” I hadn’t even read the rules all the way through. Now I’m on the Committee.

Do you receive many applications?

Ludovic Ballouard: The number of requests to join has skyrocketed. We get unsolicited requests sent to us from all over the world. I think we need to toughen the selection criteria. Either you take everyone or you take no-one. We need to check there really are two sponsors and that those sponsors are properly monitoring the candidate, that there is no cronyism.

François-Paul Journe: Coming back to what Ludovic was saying earlier, I think there should be a Poinçon de l’Académie. The idea’s been doing the rounds for a while…

(murmurs of approval)

David Candaux: Even brands contact us. Just this afternoon, I got a call from a small brand enquiring about becoming a member. I had to explain this wasn’t possible, that it had to be a watchmaker – with a brand, yes – who has personally developed and made at least 60% of their watch. After Baselworld ended, we found a venue in Geneva, IceBergues, during Watches and Wonders, where the majority of members, 25 or 26 people, exhibit, and we take advantage of the event to invite potential candidates. That way, every member can chat with them and look at their product. So it’s no longer a Committee that decides to accept so and so as a candidate but all the members, at a general meeting, in full possession of the facts. And the sponsor must already have done the bulk of the work.

David Candaux

Vianney Halter: Any member who wants to can meet the candidate, talk to them, see which terms they employ, how they relate to others, etc. It’s not just about making watches, however creative they might be. It’s a mindset, too, a willingness to share and help others, keep an open mind, welcome different ideas, know how to get along even when they may be in disagreement with someone. It’s in our foundational text: there must be a form of collegiality, the ability to coexist. It’s almost as important as knowing how to make a watch or not.

What if – pure hypothesis – Watches and Wonders invited you to join? What would you say?

Ludovic Ballouard: Ah, we’d have to vote on it. We don’t charge visitors to come and see us, we don’t ask them for anything. It’s all open and democratic…

Svend Andersen: More to the point, they don’t have to provide ID!

Another remarkable fact, the Académie isn’t limited to Switzerland but open to the entire world.

Vianney Halter: For us, that’s normal. Our borders aren’t geographic. Our world is open to all those who share, not exactly the same values, but the same attitude towards life, the same passion, the same wish to spend all day making watches, whether that’s on a machine or at the bench. That’s the basis. After that, that you’re from Antarctica or Borneo makes no difference.

Felix Baumgartner: It’s amazing how international we’re becoming and I’m sure, in the coming years, we will have more women members too, like Shona.

A bit of a provocation: if the Académie had never existed, would watchmaking have taken a different direction? Would there have been the current interest in independent artisan-creators? The likes of Shona and Sylvain.

Antoine Preziuso: No, we’d all be working in a factory. None of us would have been able to make it individually.

The Académie paved the way for independent artisans but, even with the third generation on its way, there is no AHCI “school”. Does this mean skills are passed on and acquired “naturally”?

David Candaux: I’d say true creativity is not going to school. Obviously you have to learn the basics but none of us were top students. We all went out and found what we needed ourselves. We each made our own school, by leaning on each other. We’re not all cast in the same mould, and so much the better.

Vianney Halter: We do give each other support. For example, I was very close to Sylvain and thought he needed a push, by encouraging him to become a member of the Académie, but before that, the door to my workshop was always open, I was there to answer any questions and not just about watchmaking. When you spend a year working on the same thing, obviously there are times when you start to flag. Supporting someone also means telling them, hey, let’s grab a beer and talk about something else, not just watchmaking, it means sharing a moment. That was easily done as we were in the same village but I’m regularly in touch with other members by phone, ones who live hundreds of miles away and who want my opinion on a technical point, or want to know how I go about this or that, or maybe my opinion of a customer. And whenever I’m in Hong Kong or China, we meet up, have a chat. There’s a back and forth of thoughts and ideas.

David Candaux: I used to go to Basel in the mid-1990s and the only place that really resonated with me was the AHCI corner – which I actually couldn’t find the first time I went. Already, I was impressed by what Philippe Dufour was doing, admirative because he was independent, and then there was François-Paul and his tourbillon. I told myself that if ever I managed to make my first watch, I’d like to sit at the Académie table. That was my dream and it took me 17 years to achieve. When in 2000 I designed my watch, I thought I’d never be able to make it. It seemed technically impossible. Then, when I showed Philippe my idea in 2015, he suggested I join the Académie. We all have the same questions, beyond technical questions: how do you sell your watches, how do you promote your business, how do you get started?

Vianney Halter

Vianney Halter: We give each other a leg up whenever we can. One of my customers has bought all my watches. What else do you want me to sell him, apart from wait for a new piece? I do everything I can to guide him towards others with a similar mindset, my colleagues at the Académie, keep him from going back to the industrial brands. I’d rather he stay within the group.

Have brands ever contacted you? You know, “let’s make a watch together”?

Antoine Preziuso: Well there was Goldpfeil, as we mentioned, and of course the Opus. We’ve had other enquiries, some open, some more problematic. I think we’ve all had someone call us one day or another. Even you, Philippe.

Antoine Preziuso

Philippe Dufour: I have a slightly different example that concerns not a watch but an age-old technique. The people from Credor-Seiko came to see me at Basel and asked if they could visit my workshop. I showed them how I work and at one point they asked, what’s that wood you use for polishing? Gentian. And I gave them a few pieces. That was the last I heard of that until one day I came across an article explaining how Credor is 100% Japanese and that they’d found a polishing wood similar to gentian. Isn’t that wonderful. That’s watchmaking for you!

A question for you all: is your clientele the thing that has most changed since 1985?

Svend Andersen: The clientele has changed, a lot. Initially, I only sold to people of a certain age. Now I get under-30s placing orders for my watches. People who are surprisingly knowledgeable. They know what they want and, obviously, they have money.

Felix, you wanted to say something…

Felix Baumgartner: Yes. Personally, I think the Académie is stuck in first gear and that it’s time to move up a gear, for the years to come.

A Grand Prix de l’Académie, a Poinçon de l’Académie, bigger and better communication, new faces… Our discussion moves into second gear and suddenly everyone’s talking at once. It’s time to enjoy our dinner!