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Emmanuel grew up in Charmauvillers – a French village on the Swiss border with fewer than 250 residents, and around 65 watch-assembling companies in the vicinity. “A watchmaker was more normal than a bakery, it was part of everyday life. And to this day, this small town that for me combined watchmaking with a presence in nature, is a strong inspiration.” His father – a watchmaker – was a bit of a local celebrity, as he won the Chronometrie Prize several times with different movements in the 1950s.

However, working in the watch industry was no guarantee of a stable income, especially for a family with four children. So, when Mr. Bouchet senior received an offer to work for tractor company McCormick in French Lorraine, where he would maintain all mechanical and precision timekeeping instruments connected with the company at double the income of servicing watches, the family upped and moved when Emmanuel was around four years old.

Mr. Bouchet was a watchmaker at heart. As if he couldn’t help himself, he also opened a boutique and workshop, servicing and repairing clocks and watches. The rumour spread about the workshop, where Emmanuel’s mother also worked, and soon museums in the region started bringing their antique clocks to be restored.

Perhaps it was once again being surrounded by historical and contemporary clocks and watches that made something profound change within Emmanuel. “It is hard to say why, but when I was 14, from one day to another I changed my dreams of becoming a cyclist or alpinist or pilot. Instead, I strongly felt I wanted to be a watchmaker, and started helping in the workshop, which soon moved back to where I grew up. I loved it, and my father loved it,” Emmanuel said. “The next step was attending watchmaking school in French Morteau, where everything felt natural – an unreal feeling, as I had rarely felt that schools were for me. But in watchmaking I became a top student. I felt as if I was guided by something larger than life – and after that I just had to go to Switzerland. I needed to be at the epicentre of professional watchmaking,” he explained.

“Of course, my watches are not slow, they are extremely precise. But with my watches I want you to slow down,” said Emmanuel, trying to define his watchmaking approach. Refreshingly, his words are anything but blah blah. For instance, the extra escapement in the middle of the dial on a Complication One is 75 times slower than the normal Swiss escapement that drives the balance, giving you one single tick or a single tack every 15 seconds. Source, another model, juxtaposes night and day with seconds, giving the viewer a new perspective on time.

Emmanuel Bouchet watches is arguably one of the best-known secrets in the watch world. Because why would you not desire a watch with unique complications made by someone who is known as a mastermind in the industry? A watch made by somebody who used to make grand complications for brands like Jaeger-LeCoultre, Parmigiani, as well as one of Harry Winston’s most animated (and best functioning) Opus models? A watch whose complications are embodiments of a slow-moving, alternative notion of time?

With a production of around 50 pieces per year, Emmanuel Bouchet’s manufacture-like expansion, which includes CNC machines, sounds like an anomaly – but this is the result of a resolutely entrepreneurial mindset and a passionate desire to have as much control of the production of his timepieces as possible. To make the investment and the large team economically viable, the workshop also produces watches or components for some of the most prestigious brands in the Swiss watch industry. “We will keep doing that – but with this renewal I will finally give my eponymous mechanical and artistic inventions the focus they deserve.

”Working for other brands at all places showing remarkable talent, Emmanuel Bouchet never thought of starting his own brand. That is, until one day while driving through the Jurassic mountains, he heard somebody say on the radio that “Life is just a moment, a passing hour, a fleeting day.”
“It may sound strange, but hearing this was in fact the start. I realised that I needed to make my own brand of watches with unique complications. I became obsessed with creating time displays that play with the notion of deconstructing and expanding time,” said Emmanuel.