Raúl Pagès

Raúl Pagès is an independent Swiss watchmaker, movement designer, restorer, accomplished musician, and lover of art history and 20th-century design.

In 2005 he received his diploma as watchmaker-restorer in antique watchmaking with honours, then in 2006 his diploma as designer in watch complications at the CIFOM in Le Locle. For more than 15 years he has restored horological masterpieces for some of the world's most prestigious collections, giving him the technical foundation to create pieces that combine tradition and modernity. He became an AHCI member in 2017. Three remarkable creations define his work: the Automaton Tortoise (2012, unique piece) — a hand-made automaton with over 300 components, 18k gold shell, diamond claws, sapphire eyes, hand bevelling, guilloché and Côtes de Genève, reviving the forgotten tradition of prestigious automata; the Soberly Onyx (2016, limited to 10 pieces) — his first timepiece; and the Régulateur à détente RP1 — entirely conceived, designed, and produced by hand in his workshop in Les Brenets, featuring a brand-new calibre with a pivoted detent escapement (a 'free' escapement where the balance is subjected to no stress during its additional arc, transmitting force directly from escape wheel to balance for superior mechanical efficiency) and a classic regulator dial with separate hours at 12, minutes at centre, and seconds at 6 o'clock.

The RP1 — producing just four pieces a year by hand, the only independent detent-escapement watch of its kind being made today — earned Pagès the single biggest recognition of his career: in February 2024, at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Jean Arnault announced him as the inaugural winner of the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives, selected from over 1,000 entries and a five-name finalist shortlist that included established figures like Andreas Strehler and Petermann Bédat. The prize carried a €150,000 grant and a twelve-month mentorship with La Fabrique du Temps under master watchmakers Michel Navas and Enrico Barbasini, support Pagès used to develop a new movement rather than simply refine the old. That work became the RP2, unveiled days before Watches and Wonders 2025: a deliberately pared-back three-hand watch built around a new in-house manually wound movement with a counterweighted Swiss lever escapement, a 12.5mm variable-inertia balance, and 60 hours of reserve, its multi-part dial pairing a pale-blue-coated brass base with a white agate disc chosen, Pagès has said, as a direct nod to the black onyx dial of his very first wristwatch, the Soberly Onyx. Limited to 50 pieces at CHF 89,000, the RP2 sold out rapidly, confirming that the recognition of the LVMH Prize had done exactly what it was designed to do: turn a watchmaker known mainly to detent-escapement specialists into one of the most sought-after names in the entire independent scene.