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FeatureIndependent Swiss Watchmaker H. Moser & Cie. Endeavours To Pioneer Over The Watchmaking World

With a production of less than 1,500 watches per year and an illustrious legacy of 190 years, H. Moser & Cie. as a brand respects highly prestigious watchmaking traditions while staying young at heart. Read on about this juxtaposition that is very rare in the world of watchmaking

Aditi Batra February 18, 2019

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Independent Swiss watchmakers bring in a different flavour and vigour with their ideologies, which makes for a recipe for success that is pure, unconventional and rare. Family-run businesses are all the more charming. One of them is H. Moser & Cie. that has been unequivocally making profound statements with as many as 12 ingenious in-house movements. All their movements are manufactured in-house and every watch is built and finished by hand. Often devoid of logos, indices, and sometimes even hands, H. Moser & Cie. timepieces are widely celebrated for their irreverence and the breath of fresh air they are with their quirky watchmaking philosophy. Despite having the mannerisms and exuberance of a young brand, H. Moser & Cie. enjoys a 190-year-old legacy in haute horlogerie. Founded in 1828 in St Petersburg, Russia by then 21-year-old entrepreneur Heinrich Moser—who hailed from a family of watchmakers—this maison has been immensely versatile from the get-go.

In 1829, Heinrich had established a watch factory in Le Locle, Switzerland exclusively for businesses in Europe and Russia. However, in 1848, he decided to return to Schaffhausen, his hometown. Till date, he is attributed for being instrumental in transforming Schaffhausen into a bustling industrial hub. It was in the 1950s that the watchmaker progressed from the production of pocket watches to wristwatches. Now based in Neuhausen am Rheinfall, the company presently owned by the Meylan family, makes about 1,500 watches per year, has 12 in-house calibres to their credit and manufactures over 50,000 hairsprings/assortments per year with their sister company, Precision Engineering AG.

A mysteriously bold timepiece, the Pioneer Centre Seconds makes for an extremely elegant sports watch, owing to its 120m water resistance and minimum three-day power reserve

What’s truly rare about this multi-faceted brand is that its intriguingly disruptive modern identity is shaped by Roger Nicholas Balsiger, the honorary chairman and descendant of the founder, along with the Edouard Meylan, the current CEO, who ushered in the brand’s edgy identity and revealed a rebellious side of H. Moser & Cie. In 2012, the Meylan family had taken over the reins of this heritage-bound watchmaker as a result of a strategic acquisition.

Currently home to around 50 employees, the watchmaker aims to be passionately different. They strive to develop individual, humanised products themselves and it takes 25 to 70 hours to assemble one of those. They offer the ultimate exclusivity in luxury while ensuring that the chances of ever meeting two people wearing the same watch are next to zero.

#MakeSwissMadeGreatAgain

From being resolutely minimalistic to wildly eccentric with a couple of never-seen-before products and never-heard-of-before watchmaking concepts, H. Moser & Cie. depicts a distinctly modern expression of traditional watchmaking craftsmanship. Proclaimed for its tongue-in-cheek and provocative demeanour, the brand takes to new trends as effortlessly as possible. Their timepieces have always generated a lot of buzz among watch experts, as exemplified by the 2017 Swiss Mad watch, with a case crafted with from actual Swiss cheese, to symbolically make a statement of the brand’s initiative to produce several 100-percent Swiss-made pieces to support and preserve mechanical watchmaking and its associated professions. In 2017, the Swiss Mad watch along with the Swiss Alp watch—a self-proclaimed ‘proud antithesis of the smartwatch’—were sold in Geneva by Christie’s, the leading international auction house.

H. Moser & Cie. — Limited to 100 pieces, the Venturer Small Seconds XL is imbued with the refinement of 5N red gold gloriously complemented by a purity midnight blue fumé dial

This company of dreamers professes to have love and passion as their tools and equipment, which enables them to coalesce innovation, ingenuity and superior mechanics to yield a product of true value. Leaning towards simpler and functional designs, H. Moser & Cie. watches are built with unique features and complications. Targeted towards a refined clientele, over 90 percent of H. Moser & Cie. timepieces are idiosyncratic for their fumé dials in highly skilled gradations of colour. The others have either an argenté dial or, for models in the Heritage collection, an enamelled dial. Artfully emblazoned with a smoky, graduated sunburst effect in a range of eye-catching colours—from vibrant blue, green and red to misty brown and grey—the brand’s design credo lies in evoking a sense of mystery while rendering a sense of familiarity via traditional cues.

What Shapes The Brand DNA

Their watches broadly belong in five collections. First is Endeavour, which includes exceptionally refined time measuring instruments such as the Flying Hours, Tourbillon, Perpetual Calendar, Perpetual Moon Concept, Centre Seconds Automatic, Centre Seconds Concept Blue Lagoon and Small Seconds. Second is the understated yet audacious Venturer, under which there is the Tourbillon Dual Time, Big Date, Small Seconds Xl, Small Seconds and Concept Blue Lagoon. Third comes the all-terrain Pioneer that boasts of elegant everyday sporty watches such as the Tourbillon, Perpetual Calendar and Centre Seconds. Paying homage to its traditional roots and exceptional artisan watchmaking is the Heritage collection, which comprises the Perpetual Calendar, Perpetual Moon and Tourbillon, crafted with enamelling, guilloché work, engraving, stone-setting—the works.

Then there is the game changer—the 2016 cheeky novelty that directly challenges one of the biggest trends in the horological industry of smartwatches—the Swiss Alp watch. Over three years of research and development, a remarkable team of engineers and a collaboration with one of the most innovative technology providers spawned feats including the Minute Repeater, Minute Repeater Concept Black, Small Seconds and Cosmic Green Concept.

Modelled with a back-to-basics concept, a passing resemblance to the rectangular-shaped Apple watch and a dash of dark humour, these iterations do not let the wearer make calls, hunt Pokémon or to try out the latest SnapChat filters, but instead perform the one task they are meant for: to tell time. With no filter, interface or embellishment, the technically-advanced Swiss Alp watch—fitted with the in-house H. Moser calibre that features a power reserve indicator and Straumann hairspring®—has created quite a stir since its inception.

Over the last few years, H. Moser & Cie. has been intently focused on upping its game with clever marketing that can dispel a new identity for them and garner interest. It is pretty evident that the brand not only has its finger on the pulse and is acclimatised with what’s new and trending but also has an acute understanding of how to redesign classics for the modern audience. With an arresting aesthetic imbibed in their DNA, this Swiss watchmaker’s axiom seems to be to stay relevant while being irreverent.

Explore all the H. Moser & Cie. watches available at Ethos

Artfully emblazoned with a smoky, graduated sunburst effect in a range of eye-catching colours—from vibrant blue, green and red to misty brown and grey—the brand’s design credo lies in evoking a sense of mystery while rendering a sense of familiarity via traditional cues