LUDOVIC BALLOUARD
Ludovic Ballouard, born in Brittany in 1971, spent seven years at F. P. Journe before establishing his own Geneva workshop in 2009. He works on a single idea pursued with unusual rigour: making the display of the hour a mechanical event. Working with one other watchmaker, he produces between twelve and twenty-four watches a year.
Upside Down and Half Time
In the Upside Down, all twelve hour numerals sit inverted except the current one, which flips upright on the hour — a reading of time in which only the present moment is legible. Half Time, introduced in 2013, splits every numeral in two and completes only the hour being shown, adding a retrograde minute display. Each numeral needs its own mechanism, an enormous amount of construction to solve a problem nobody had posed.
A One-Man Workshop
Ballouard designs, builds, decorates and assembles on the outskirts of Geneva, with production limited by the hours the work demands. The finishing follows the school in which he trained, applied to movements of his own architecture. He remains among the smallest genuinely independent makers producing original complications rather than variations on existing ones.