Edouard Koehn

Edouard Koehn (1839–1908) began his career as clockmaker to the court of the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, growing up immersed in the highest horological standards of the period. In 1859 he moved to Geneva to study at the school of horology before joining a prestigious watchmaking manufacture, where his ability and rapid progress earned him a partnership in the company. He traveled widely, notably to North America, building a network of agents for the manufacture's watches and earning a reputation for both technical knowledge and personal integrity. In 1891, wanting greater latitude to produce watches to his own standards, he bought the Geneva establishment of the noted Danish watchmaker H.R. Ekegren and remodeled it around his own haute horlogerie principles, competing successfully with Geneva's best manufacturers while diversifying into chronometers, extra-thin watches, and master complications. On his death in 1908 the house passed to his son, Edouard Koehn Jr, who continued the tradition of precision timepieces into the 1930s.

The modern Edouard Koehn Master Watchmaker SÀRL presents itself explicitly as a rebirth of that 19th-century heritage rather than a new brand borrowing a historic name. Today the house is family-owned, led by two complementary generations under CEO Bernard Fleury, and has chosen to base its manufacture in La Chaux-de-Fonds — a UNESCO World Heritage-listed watchmaking town set 1,000 metres above sea level, long considered one of the cradles of Swiss horology. The brand's stated philosophy rests on five pillars: the Rebirth of Koehn's original heritage; Independence, as a family-run operation outside the major watch groups; High Standards, in keeping with the founder's own obsession with quality; Exclusivity, with current models produced in small series true to Koehn's historical preference for unique pieces and limited runs; and an Identity built on innovation, elegance, and classicism across both the aesthetic and mechanical character of every watch.

The modern collection is organized around several lines, many explicitly reviving complications associated with the historic house. The Tempus series traces the brand's chronograph lineage: Tempus I introduced Edouard Koehn's first automatic chronograph, a 245-component movement developed with an independent La Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture; Tempus II Open Heart added a mono-pusher chronograph with an inverted escapement visible through an open-worked dial; and Tempus III, in Grade 5 titanium with a ceramic bezel, runs the in-house Tri-Compax EK-CHR-MVT01 self-winding movement developed with Concepto, available in Skeleton and Guilloché executions. The Legacy Moonphase integrates a moon-phase and date display into a chronograph in the classic Legacy case language, while the Legacy Rattrapante revives the split-seconds chronograph — among the most complex chronograph types — developed in close collaboration with 10Ten Labs, the brand's exclusive distributor for Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The World Heritage I and II models, each limited to 88 pieces in Grade 5 titanium, combine a world-time display with an alarm function via the double-barrel EK-MVTWTA01 calibre — a genuinely rare combination of complications — with World Heritage II adding a guilloché dial and rotating 24-hour city disc to the format.