Hervé Schlüchter
Hervé Schlüchter founded his eponymous atelier in Biel/Bienne on the Spring Equinox of 2022, after nearly twenty-five years working within the constraints of major watchmaking companies — most prominently as a movement constructor at Bovet, where he eventually came to manage the Tramelan manufacture. The turning point came in 2016: the loss of his father coincided with the birth of his own son, and that convergence of grief and new life became the catalyst that led him to dedicate himself fully to his family and to the creation of his own watches. In the years that followed, he matured his project carefully, spending time studying with Philippe Dufour to refine the finer points of movement decoration and finishing — a mentorship whose influence runs directly through the atelier's hallmark techniques: long springs with ample curves, pronounced inward and outward angles, mirror polishing brought to perfection, rounded edges, and slender, generous contours.
The atelier's motto, Creare Durare — 'to create to last' — is the founding design principle: not a philosophy of doing less, but of taking the time it takes, without constraint or haste, to think differently, to return to what is essential in both mechanics and aesthetics, and to find the perfect balance. Schlüchter has described his ambition as imagining what the great master watchmakers of the 18th century would create if they were working today — contemporary classical watchmaking, placing the human dimension at the centre of the creative process. His small team works from an elegant 19th-century mansion set in a park beside the Suze river in Biel, using a collection of antique tools and machines built up patiently across his career, with which Schlüchter crafts nearly every component himself — literally everything but the watch cases and a handful of movement parts such as the mainspring and the jewels.
L'Essentiel is the debut watch and the first opus of a planned trilogy called Tree of Life — a philosophical collection built around the idea of intergenerational time and transmission across grandparent, parent, and child. The dial's inspiration traces to a regulator clock made around 1800 by Antide Janvier, the celebrated French clockmaker, filtered through Schlüchter's own conception of what he calls a philosophical regulator: dissociated time indications spread across the dial rather than gathered at a single point, so that reading the time becomes a more deliberate, contemplative act. At the centre of the concept is a 24-hour rotating disc bearing a sun that carries the Latin inscription Hic Hodie — 'here, now' — a dedication to children and their instinctive inclination to live fully in the present, and to their direct, uncomplicated connection to the essential joy of life. Before beginning fabrication, Schlüchter spent countless hours designing the calibre digitally, searching repeatedly for a way to harmonise several foundational watchmaking specialties into a single coherent object: hand guilloché in German silver, small-seconds in grand feu enamel, an aventurine 24-hour disc, and thermally blued steel hands — an ambitious synthesis of finishing techniques that Schlüchter pursued with total seriousness, having built the entire project from a life-changing personal reckoning rather than as an academic exercise.
The 39mm × 10.37mm stainless steel case is polished and brushed, fitted with a sapphire crystal carrying double-sided anti-reflective coating and a sapphire caseback, water-resistant to 30 metres. The in-house Calibre HS-01 is hand-wound, with 27 jewels and 189 components across a 34.60mm × 7.38mm footprint, running at 2.5Hz (18,000 vph) with a 60-hour power reserve, displaying hours via the rotating 24-hour disc with day/night indication, minutes, and hacking small seconds. Movement finishing includes tubular steel bridges and wolf's-teeth winding wheels — both individually beautiful decorative choices, contributing to a dial and movement widely noted in the specialist press for the sheer density and ambition of techniques brought together in a single debut piece. The strap is hand-sewn alligator with alligator lining and a steel pin buckle. L'Essentiel was released as a subscription watch in a limited edition of 25 pieces at CHF 78,000, and sold out; an initial edition of 10 watches sold out even earlier, before the atelier's official public launch. Ateliers Hervé Schlüchter describes itself as a tribute to the human spirit, to sharing, and to humility in service of Swiss watchmaking excellence — born, in its own words, of pleasure, patience, and passion.