Shona Taine — Khemea
Shona Taine is a young independent watchmaker from La Chaux-de-Gilley who uniquely combines literature, philosophy, and watchmaking — a passion ignited at age 10 by Prague's astronomical clock.
Winner of several awards including Best Apprentice in France, she trained at the Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau before founding her brand Khemea at age 22 (the word means 'alchemy' in Ancient Greek — highly expressive of her journey). Based at Olivier Mory's workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds, she became an AHCI candidate in 2023 and the youngest and first female AHCI full member in 2025. Her debut timepiece — the Khemea Arkhea ('Arkhè' meaning origin, foundation, beginning — the first watch designed and created by a woman at Khemea) — is a masterwork of three-level dial architecture: Grande Feu enamel off-centred hours and minutes at top with hand-engraved Khemea logo; hand-guilloché silver layer at centre; a tourbillon at 6 o'clock held by a distinctive double arrow-shaped bridge. To the left, a silver moon on an aventurine disc with 'C'-shaped index; to the right, a poetic aventurine date disc with 31 tiny openings and 8-marker 5-day increment guides with a dot for the current day — instantly intuitive.
On the movement side, a two-pawl ratchet arrangement inspired by striking watches adds visual pleasure during hand-winding as the pawls come to life. The power reserve uses a George Daniels cone differential to display 100 hours on a discreet 30° arc. Darkened grained bridges with blued screws and traditional hand-polished detailing give the movement both a modern aesthetic and undeniable Haute Horlogerie credentials. Contemporary yet crafted with ancient techniques on machines many generations older than its maker. In-house manual-winding calibre, 21,600vph (3Hz), 100-hour power reserve, 40mm grade 5 titanium case, 10mm height, tapering polished bezel with curvaceous brushed sides and flowing lugs, sapphire caseback, 30m water resistance. Limited to 12 pieces. Her dream: to eventually create a chiming watch.
The Arkhea hides its most personal detail from view entirely: a poem Taine wrote is engraved directly into the movement's cogs, arranged so the words only align into readable order a few times a year, at the rare moments when the moon's cycle and the Gregorian calendar coincide — and even then, the only way to actually read it is to take the watch apart. It is a fitting signature for a watchmaker whose university studies in philosophy and literature run as deep as her technical training, and who has described her own approach simply as not reinventing the wheel, but putting it together in a new way. Before founding Khemea at 22, she spent six months after graduating Morteau servicing and repairing watches part-time for an independent watchmaker in Les Brenets, then set out on her own, trading small repair jobs for advice from as many established watchmakers as she could find — research that eventually connected her to Olivier Mory, whose industrial-production background complemented her own classical training. In 2024 she was named a semi-finalist for the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives, and in April 2025, at 27, she became both the youngest person and the first woman ever admitted to full AHCI membership — a milestone covered by outlets well beyond the watch press, including CNN's reporting on a broader Gen-Z-driven resurgence of interest in traditional watchmaking craft. Her stated ambition remains the one she set for herself as a ten-year-old staring up at the Prague Astronomical Clock: to one day build a chiming watch of her own.