A supplier of components to the watch world, the 12-year-old independent brand Romain Gauthier creates exceptional timepieces that are works of art and technology. Watch journalist Roberta Naas profiles the man behind the brand in this feature from WatchTime’s February 2018 issue.
Romain Gauthier founded his eponymous watch brand in 2005.
Just a dozen years old, the eponymous Swiss independent watch brand, Romain Gauthier, handcrafts some of the most beautiful and technologically advanced watches on the market ? in incredibly limited numbers. In fact, the brand builds just about 60 timepieces a year in its Vallée de Joux Le Sentier workshops. Led by the visionary and passionate Romain Gauthier, the exceptional watches that bear his name on the dial are a deft blend of haute horlogerie and intense technical innovation. Trained and certified as a constructor of precision machinery, the now 42-year-old Gauthier initially did not intend to make a career in the watch world. Still, living in Switzerland, it is hard to bypass this craft. After spending six years studying mechanics and machinery on an engineering path, Gauthier?s first job was as a programmer/operator at one of the top watch movement manufactures in Switzerland, François Golay. It would change his life.
Gauthier says that being in the cradle of watchmaking and having experience making movement parts started him wondering about building a brand. ?A watch is, after all, a small machine. And so I started to ti...