Statera
Rafael Guimarães and Antonio Almir dos Santos Neto, childhood friends since the age of five, founded Statera in Maringá, Brazil. Their first watch, the ST01, was designed in Brazil but manufactured in France — explicitly, in Rafael's own words, a proof of concept to see whether they could actually sell watches at all. Brazil's punishing import tax structure, which can add 60 percent or more to the cost of goods brought into the country, made importing machinery like a guilloché press effectively impossible, but the raw materials for enamel work — silver, enamel powder, an affordable oven — were available locally. Rather than work around that constraint, the pair leaned directly into it, spending roughly two years teaching themselves the craft from books, a sheet of copper, and YouTube before reaching out to established experts.
That outreach led to real, named mentorship: Armand Billard, founder of Sartory Billard, helped connect them to European suppliers for the ST01; Naomi Nevill, a Welsh master enameler who has produced Grand Feu dials for Vitreum, also featured in this catalogue, coached them through weekly video calls, helping resolve persistent bubbling issues and guiding their switch from copper to sterling silver dial blanks; and Gabriel Colliard, a longtime Patek Philippe veteran who has enamelled dials for Vacheron Constantin, Louis Vuitton, and Rexhep Rexhepi, also featured here, whom Rafael met while in Switzerland for a WOSTEP course and later returned to for a three-day hands-on enamelling workshop.
The ST02's case was designed by Angelique Chappuis, a habillage specialist with three decades at houses including Cartier, TAG Heuer, and various Swatch Group brands, who discovered Statera on Instagram and was drawn in part by her own half-Brazilian heritage. Rafael describes the ST02 as a project 'made by six hands,' crediting Chappuis alongside himself and Antonio — the first watch conceived and entirely made in Brazil, its Grand Feu enamel dial fired in-house on sterling silver blanks, its cardinal indices shaped after the pine nut of a local tree, paired with matte dauphine hands.
Offered in 37mm or 39mm, the ST02 is cased in 316L steel with a sapphire crystal carrying a five-layer anti-reflective coating, running the automatic La Joux-Perret G100 — the only major component sourced outside Brazil — for 68 hours of reserve and 30 metres of water resistance. Priced from roughly $3,300 to $5,000 depending on configuration, each watch is made to order, with delivery of up to 180 days.