Julien Coudray 1518

Founded in 2007 by Fabien Lamarche — who spent over 20 years at prestigious houses including Breguet (process manager), Roger Dubuis (product director), L. Leroy (module and automaton developer), and Zenith (head of prototype department) — before turning independent to fulfil his dream of a true 'Manufacture de grande horlogerie.' The brand is named for the Renaissance watchmaker Julien Coudray, who in 1518 created portable watch movements fitted into the handles of royal daggers for King François I of France. Based in Le Locle, operating through IMH Group with 46 mastered skills and a collective of around 40 individuals.

The brand's defining signature: all components of every watch — movement mainplate, bridges, wheels, even the screws — are machined from a single one-kilo block of the same metal as the case (yellow gold, red gold, white gold, or platinum). No stainless steel, no 'common' metals: only noble materials. Dials are grand feu champlevé or plique-à-jour enamel. Three models: the Manufactura 1528 (3-hand manual, service indicator, Renaissance-engraved bridges); the Classica 1548 (43mm small seconds, enamel dial); and the Competentia 1515 (tourbillon with service, day/night and power-reserve indicators). A sport model in titanium with a chequered flag motif also exists. The 'service indicator' — signalling the need for maintenance every four years — is a Julien Coudray innovation rarely seen elsewhere.

The single-metal principle creates challenges most manufactures never face. Because jewels are set directly into the gold or platinum mainplate and bridges rather than into brass chatons, tolerances must be extraordinarily tight — any variance in expansion or wear between softer precious metal and the movement's working parts would compromise timekeeping, so Lamarche's team compensates with exacting machining rather than the industry's usual metallurgical shortcuts. The line-up grew deliberately, model by model, each one adding capability: the three-hand Manufactura 1528 to establish the brand's classical credentials, the tourbillon Competentia 1515 to claim horological seriousness, the small-seconds Classica 1548 — priced around CHF 85,000 in gold and, unlike its siblings, produced outside strict limitation — to showcase the specialised balance wheel and stop-seconds work, and finally the JC 1588 Sport, a lightweight, water-resistant automatic model built in response to client demand, remarkable for offering an owner's personalised license-plate information worked into the movement. Lamarche has described his founding principle simply: to make timeless pieces from pure metals unadulterated by chemical treatments or coatings, a philosophy of permanence he first tested across two decades inside other people's manufactures before building his own. The brand publicly launched its collection in 2012, five years after IMH's founding, once Lamarche had assembled his team across the roughly 40 skills a genuine manufacture requires — and visitors to Le Locle still describe the workshop as watchmaking tradition prevailing in miniature: a hidden, humble atelier producing some of the only movements in the world with no base metal anywhere in their construction.