HAUTE-RIVE
Haute-Rive was founded in 2023 by Stéphane von Gunten, formerly research and innovation director at Ulysse Nardin and earlier part of the team behind Patek Philippe’s Spiromax balance spring. The name comes from the workshop of his great-great-grandfather, Irénée Aubry, a nineteenth-century watchmaker who built exceptionally long-running pocket watches. The brand’s debut answered the same question Aubry had asked.
Honoris and 1,000 Hours
The Honoris runs for roughly forty-one days — about a thousand hours — on a single mainspring three metres long that occupies the full diameter of the case, driving a flying tourbillon. Achieving it required a gear train arranged to keep the watch under eight millimetres thick, and winding through the bezel rather than a crown. It is among the longest power reserves ever fitted to a wristwatch.
A Family Line Resumed
Aubry patented an eight-day pocket watch in 1889, and the modern Honoris is presented as the continuation of that line rather than a homage to it. Von Gunten’s career in movement research gives the claim technical weight: the watch is an engineering result, not a reinterpretation. Production is limited, and the collection has since extended to fully skeletonised executions.