Pascal Coyon
Based in Bayonne in the south-west of France, near Biarritz and Hossegor, Pascal Coyon trained at the renowned Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau — which also produced Théo Auffret and Florent Lecomte — before working as a watch and clock restorer. Around 2010 he embarked on an ambitious project: to create a classic chronometre wristwatch by hand at an affordable price. The resulting Series 1 — a 60-piece limited edition in three movement colours (yellow, pink, silver), all sold out. Series 2 features an in-house Calibre 19 (only the winding stem is from a Unitas base — all other components are exclusive to Coyon), beating at 18,000vph with a large balance wheel for chronometric precision and consistent torque.
Cases designed by Pascal and made by Voutilainen; dials by Metalem in midnight blue with applied white gold indices. Available in white gold, rose gold, or platinum with extensive customisation options including enamel dials. He has no website — contact via Instagram or Facebook. Wait times of 2–3 years or more. Also still takes restoration commissions.
The Series 1's Calibre 1900C took its aesthetic guidance from the Longines 19.70, a celebrated early-20th-century pocket-watch movement, and Coyon's reworking of the humble Unitas 6498 base went beyond decoration: elegantly curved bridges, polished bevels, a comma-shaped micrometric regulator index, and a fully sandblasted finish transformed an off-the-shelf ébauche into something collectors now describe as a marvel of hand-executed horology. Several examples underwent trials at the Besançon Observatory and carry a small viper-head stamp at the base of the balance cock as proof of chronometric certification — a detail auction houses now highlight as evidence of the watch's technical seriousness, not merely its charm. Originally priced under $6,000 when the Series 1 launched, examples now trade at four to five times that figure whenever they surface at Phillips or through specialist dealers, and the wait for the current Series 2 — handmade at a rate of roughly one watch a month by Coyon working alongside his daughter, Barbara Coyon — has stretched well past the two-to-three-year mark quoted to new clients. Operating with no formal website, no marketing department, and no distribution beyond Instagram and Facebook, Coyon has built one of French independent watchmaking's most quietly devoted followings on nothing more than a repairer's obsessive eye and a wristwatch project that, twelve years on, still sells out before it's finished.