After nearly 50 years in the watchmaking industry, Jean-Claude Biver has launched his eponymous watch brand. Partnering with his son Pierre, the two have embarked on a new journey to create a highly prestigious and exclusive brand, that will produce museum-quality watches.
The brand launched at Biver’s magnificent 18th-century farmhouse just outside of Geneva, which will house the brand’s offices and workshops. This new chapter begins with the minute repeater, a complication the family holds close to their hearts.
Minute repeater
The Biver adventure continues through sound. Sound is a vibration that can be related to the world of emotions, and therefore this journey continues with the complication. The minute repeater is both useful and poetic and manifests the sound of eternity, according to the brand. “We want the minute repeater to be the cornerstone of the brand,” Pierre explained, “made to a design we both could identify with and with a movement that serves the aesthetic we defined. A contemporary watch, inspired by tradition and representative of both my father and me.”
While the minute repeater is an age-old movement, the Bivers have a plan to make it not just contemporary, but a desired complication. The pair have introduced a new and different sound which they believe will make collectors perk their interested. “We added a third hammer, which requires a very fine adjustment of the tempo to get the tone right,” Pierre continued. “We also opted for a tourbillon with a titanium cage, which makes it lighter but also more challenging to decorate, as well as modern bridges, and to power the watch we have a micro-rotor.”
Pursuit of perfection
The minute repeater finds its uniqueness in the relentless and uncompromising pursuit of perfection that the brand put into this watch. Hand decorations appear on almost everything, even the tiniest of parts that otherwise can’t be seen. The watch case and its parts are polished, satin-finished, grained and flame blued. Biver’s signature can be seen in these final touches, a signature that can be seen throughout his career leading Blancpain, TAG Heuer, Omega and Hublot. “We decided to decorate all the faces of all components of the movement,” the Bivers said. “To achieve this, we had to push our partners to develop techniques for decorating certain parts of the pieces that were not originally designed to be decorated. The underside of the bridges, for example, is hand-grained, which is rarely done.”
The Carillon Tourbillon also features a stone dial in sodalite. The domed shape provides a challenge of its own. “It is very difficult to make because of its infinitesimal thickness: the stone affixed to a gold plate that is 1.15 mm high, counting the applied indexes, the total height is just 1.6 mm. The difficulty resides in obtaining this domed appearance without breakage during the polishing phase,” the company said in a statement.
Despite being a highly complicated watch, that one may deem precious, it was also designed to be worn every day, everywhere and under all circumstances. The Biver minute repeater is not just a collector’s item, but also an object of curiosity.
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