VIANNEY HALTER
Vianney Halter trained in Paris and settled in Sainte-Croix, in the Swiss Jura, where he restores antique clockwork alongside his own creations. He belongs to the small group of independents who build watches from first principles rather than from a catalogue of parts, and his workshop remains deliberately small: a handful of pieces leave it each year.
The Antiqua
The Antiqua Perpetual Calendar, unveiled in 1998, announced an entirely new visual grammar. Riveted portholes, a hull-shaped case and exposed constructional detail proposed a machine imagined by the nineteenth century for a future that never arrived. The watch is widely credited with opening an aesthetic territory that many others later followed.
Deep Space
The Deep Space Tourbillon carries a triple-axis tourbillon suspended at the centre of a domed sapphire case, the regulating organ turning on three separate planes. It is an object built around a single idea pursued without compromise, and it remains the clearest statement of a watchmaker who has never separated engineering from imagination.