ominique Renaud and Julien Tixier. A master watchmaker with more than 40 years’ experience and a prototype watchmaker who just turned 30. The team they form is unlike any other in the industry. Not teacher and student but a duo of equals. A merging of talent.

There is a connection and a complementarity between the two men. Something of a role reversal, too: Renaud is the out-of-the-box thinker, Tixier the guardian of tradition.

Introductions

Thinking outside the box is something Dominique Renaud has done throughout his rich career as a watchmaker, explorer of mechanisms, entrepreneur, dreamer, a free man. You could say he was born into watchmaking: his mother was an horlogère régleuse (a precision adjuster) from Vallée de Joux; his French father was also a watchmaker. The two met while employed at Vacheron Constantin. Fate had spoken.

Like so many other children in similar circumstances, young Dominique was fascinated by these tiny ticking mechanisms. He, too, became a watchmaker and in 1979 went to work for Audemars Piguet. In 1986 he and his friend Giulio Papi founded Renaud & Papi SA, where they would build a reputation for their remarkable complication movements and play a decisive role in the renewal of contemporary complicated watchmaking.

Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier at Julien’s workshop in Vallée de Joux.

Not only would they work for the industry’s foremost names - a list that includes, as well as Audemars Piguet, a who’s who of watchmaking starting with Günter Blümlein, who enlisted them first for IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, then for the rebirth of A. Lange & Söhne, and, among numerous others, a certain Richard Mille who came knocking with an idea for a brand in mind -, they became a de facto talent incubator for a new and creative generation of independent watchmakers.

The likes of Robert Greubel, Stephen Forsey, Andreas Strehler, the Grönefeld brothers and Carole Forestier-Kasapi all passed through their doors. Not forgetting Christophe Claret with whom Dominique Renaud co-founded RPC SA, later Manufacture Christophe Claret.

But like we said, Dominique Renaud is a free man. In 2000 he sold his share of the company to Audemars Piguet (which had already taken a majority stake), cleared his workbench and his diary, and moved to the south of France where he would spend the best part of the next decade beneath the stars, exploring and imagining endless horological possibilities while producing oil from olives he grew himself.

When he returned to Switzerland in 2011, he came with a revolutionary project that would become a marker in the history of movement regulation. The DR01 Twelve First debuted Renaud’s blade resonator; a completely new type of regulating organ. A watch that has no equivalent to this day. (See Europa Star 5/2017).

Dominique Renaud DR01 Twelve First

It was around this time, in 2016, that Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier crossed paths. Tixier, then 23, was making prototypes for Laurent Ferrier and already proving himself to be talented beyond his years. He went to hear Renaud lecture on his incredible blade resonator and came away transformed.

This would be just one of several lightbulb moments. Unlike Dominique Renaud, Julien Tixier grew up (in France’s Bordeaux region) in a family that had no connection to watchmaking. Even so, he fell in love with this miniature world at just seven years of age, when a family friend let him peek through his watch’s transparent back. There and then Julien Texier knew that “when he grew up” he would be a watchmaker.

Julien Tixier

After a series of formative experiences (described in Europa Star 1/2023), come 2019 he was a watchmaker-prototypist working independently – in every sense of the word – out of a small workshop at the heart of Vallée de Joux.

A young man he may be, Tixier is a watchmaker of the old school, doing everything – and we mean everything – himself. From smelting metal to the tiniest screw, from counting the balance spring to technical drawings, from tempering to fine adjustments, from chamfering to machining, the list goes on and on.

His workspace is crammed with an unimaginable array of instruments, tools and machines old and new. A binocular microscope jostles with a soldering iron, a computer sits next to a kiln, a jig bore alongside sticks of gentian wood, for polishing. An entire one-man manufacture.

Part of Julien Tixier’s workshop in Vallée de Joux

Photo Guillaume Perret for Europa Star

Tempus Fugit, their first joint project

Having officially met, the two independents knuckled down to their first joint project. And not just any project: a milestone that also revealed their complementary talents… and similarly modest personalities.

Dominique Renaud visualises everything in his head, makes a couple of quick sketches then builds plexiglas models to prove his point. Julien Tixier drafts construction plans then gets down to business cutting, machining, assembling…

The project in question was the astonishing Tempus Fugit, a watch that is truly one of a kind. It was built from start to finish by Tixier in his workshop – with the exception of one highly specific micro-disc that would have robbed him of several weeks. Tempus Fugit is an extremely rare secular perpetual calendar that will breeze past the year 2100, an obstacle for traditional perpetual calendars, and continue to track the precise time for centuries to come: 10,000 years at the very least.

As its name suggests, it also uses a personalised algorithm to count down the probable number of years its owner has left to live (read more on the mysteries of this remarkable watch in Europa Star 6/2022). On the back of this first development, the pair made a simplified secular perpetual calendar for Furlan Marri (Andrea Furlan had already been involved in the design of the DR01).

Tempus Fugit, Europa Star 6/2022

Genesis of the Renaud Tixier brand

In early 2023 a decisive encounter took place between Dominique Renaud and Michel Nieto. Having served as Chief Executive for Baume & Mercier from 2002 until 2009, Nieto then held executive positions at Bulgari, de Grisogono, HYT and Cadramont. He is a man with solid experience of operations and product development, along with a keen understanding of markets.

His admiration for Dominique Renaud is plain. “Watchmaking would not be the same if Renaud Papi had never existed. They are a marker on the horological timeline. Dominique Renaud has done some extraordinary things. He loves being around young people. He has a stream of ideas, many of which simply haven’t interested brands, too obsessed by complications whereas he works on the core principles of regulation, energy or precision. I was blown away. Anyway, I asked myself, how can I help him?”

The two men got talking. Naturally, Renaud introduced Nieto to Julien Tixier, but also movement constructor Alexandre Bugnon and prototypist Sébastien Rousseau. The idea to create a brand that would bring Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier under one roof quickly followed. “Except creating a real brand, a brand at the very pinnacle of the market, a brand that does what it says it will do and delivers on time, all that takes money. We needed investors.”

Enter Jean-Luc Errant. A newcomer to watchmaking, this tech entrepreneur and specialist in fibre connectivity agreed to back them and put together a group of investors who were willing to support the nascent Sàrl Manufacture Dominique Renaud. The company’s founding shareholders are Renaud, Tixier, Nieto (also general manager) and Errant (via his company). The business was registered mid-2023 and is home to the Renaud Tixier brand.

Renaud Tixier is the tip of a comprehensive enterprise, currently in the deployment phase and which comprises a development hub and a production centre. Eight months ago Manufacture Dominique Renaud moved into a spacious facility in Nyon, a short way from Geneva (and across the road from the Hublot head office), and is already partly operational.

“We’re moving forward step by step, stage by stage,” says Michel Nieto. Model-making, construction and prototyping are already up and running; assembly and a research laboratory are being rolled out. The aim is also to rapidly bring finishing (to the highest standard) in-house. The company expects to recruit watchmakers and other specialists in the near future.

Things are moving incredibly fast. Plans are ready, components are ordered, there’s a buzz in the air… because the bar is high: around a hundred watches annually with first deliveries scheduled for “the beginning of the second half of this year. No stock. All the watches will be pre-sold,” Michel Nieto warns, adding that “a distributor has already made a 50% down payment for twenty of the first watch, the Monday.” He, Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier recently returned from meeting collectors in Dubai, Japan, China and Singapore.

Fundamentals first

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday…. the name Renaud Tixier has chosen for its first watch implies more to come.

None of what’s in store will focus on the traditional complications, an area in which rival brands typically battle it out, not always with great imagination and often for hype. Renaud Tixier has set itself a more deeply horological mission to refine and rethink the core principles of a mechanical watch: escapement, regulation, automatic winding, isochronism and energy.

Renaud Tixier has set itself a more deeply horological mission to refine and rethink the core principles of a mechanical watch: escapement, regulation, automatic winding, isochronism and energy.

The Monday takes energy as its starting point. Dominique Renaud went rifling through his multiple folders in search of solutions to improve the rotor’s winding efficiency. Specifically, the micro-rotor. The advantages of the micro-rotor are that it can be integrated into the movement and allows for an unobstructed view of it. The disadvantage is that its acceleration is halted more easily than with a standard rotor.

What if there were a way to increase its winding power or at least improve its efficiency? A micro-rotor needs a large amplitude of movement in order to function properly. However “micro” it may be, it doesn’t respond to “micro movements” such as typing on a keyboard or a simple hand gesture. The question being, how to convert the energy from these constant, tiny jolts?

Dominique Renaud’s basic concept came from his observation that the centre of the micro-rotor is underutilised compared to the periphery. There was room, literally, for improvement…

The dancer

Poetically named “the dancer”, this invention is an ancillary mechanism at the centre of the micro-rotor, powered by a flexible spring. This dancer, which also has a “leg” and a “foot”, acts as both a propeller and a shock absorber, capable of absorbing even extreme shocks and releasing the energy from them. The image is that of a tennis racket whose strings store energy from the ball then catapult it back.

As simple as it may seem on paper, the dancer is technically complex. It comprises multiple parts. The “catapult” is a large spiral spring that connects the central axis to the mechanism; the “shock absorber” is a spring arm that extends from the axis in the opposite direction, “functioning like a foot with a heel that strikes against a stop in the event of a severe shock,” to quote the brand.

The dancer, which is positioned at the centre of the micro-rotor, under the double-ellipse bridge that supports the central axis, operates like a notched clamp, with an upper jaw shaped like a hanger. This hanger acts as an active safety device: it is rigid under normal conditions, securing the innovative mechanism to the axis; during a shock, the foot strikes the stop, pushing on the hanger, which then disengages from the axis, and repositions itself after the shock, having stored and then released the energy.

As usual, Dominique Renaud first tested his invention on a large-scale model which confirmed beyond any doubt that this original mechanism does improve the micro-rotor’s winding efficiency. He now hands over to Julien Tixier who, alongside Alexandre Bugnon and Sébastien Rousseau, will navigate this territory not yet mapped by theory and build the first prototype that should validate the concept.

The real challenge will be to precisely quantify this improvement as, we are told, “the standard computation methods for micro-rotors are not applicable in this case.” What gains does the dancer enable in terms of winding efficiency? “It’s too early to say. No existing control tool is capable of measuring it.”

Monday, the inaugural model

An entirely new calibre has been designed around the micro-rotor and its dancer, which takes centre-stage. As though echoing its flexibility, bridges that are “as light and arched as catapults” stretch over the micro-rotor, gear train and balance. The entire movement leads from the micro-rotor in a classical architecture heightened by superlative modern finishing with hand-chamfering, mirror-polished titanium and a palladium balance. Frequency is 2.5 Hz (18,800 vph) and power reserve is more than 60 hours.

The RVI2023 movement that equips the Renaud Tixier Monday. 315 components. The barrel cover is decorated with purple Grand Feu enamel (a colour which, in the work of the painter Wassily Kandinsky, represents Monday).

©Laurent Xavier Moulin

“We weren’t looking to make some big ‘wow’ effect,” we are told. The Monday sets its technical narrative in the elegantly simple framework of a dial which emphasises legibility. An opening at 9 o’clock reveals the innovation, visually mirrored by small seconds at 4 o’clock.

The micro-rotor and dancer in an aperture at 9 o’clock.

©Laurent Xavier Moulin

The Monday is priced at CHF 79,000. “We address an audience primarily of collectors and connoisseurs who are able to understand the utility of this fundamental exploration of the principles of a mechanical watch. Each of the pieces in this nascent collection will, in its own way, exemplify this purely horological endeavour,” says Michel Nieto, who is clearly eager to press ahead and putting his international contacts to good use.

The Renaud Tixier Monday. Case in 5N+ rose gold or white gold. 40.8mm diameter, 11mm high. The dial, under the sapphire crystal, is slate grey with a sunburst finish or silver grey with a grained finish. Fitted with a hand-stitched calfskin or alligator strap in black, brown or navy. Pin buckle in 18k rose gold or 18k white gold.

©Laurent Xavier Moulin

Long life and every success to Renaud Tixier. They are the proof that research into mechanical horology is alive and well, and that contrary to what some may say, not everything which can be invented, has been invented. As Renaud Tixier intends to prove.