MANUFACTURE ROYALE
Manufacture Royale takes its name from the watchmaking enterprise Voltaire established at Ferney in 1770, when the philosopher set out to build a watch industry on his own estate and sell it across Europe. The name was revived in 2010 by the cousins Alex and David Gouten as a Swiss independent producing tourbillons and complications in small series, with that eighteenth-century origin as its stated point of departure.
Voltaire’s Enterprise
Voltaire’s venture recruited watchmakers to Ferney and marketed their output through his correspondence network, employing several hundred people at its height and counting Jean-Antoine Lépine among its watchmakers. It ran from 1770 until Voltaire’s death in 1778. The contemporary brand uses that story as a licence for irreverence rather than as a claim to unbroken continuity, and is explicit about being a revival.
Tourbillons and Contemporary Complications
The current collections centre on flying tourbillons, skeletonised architecture and complications including minute repeaters, produced in Switzerland in limited numbers. One signature piece runs two flying tourbillons at different speeds, one turning every six seconds against the other’s minute. Designs lean deliberately contemporary rather than attempting eighteenth-century pastiche.