Chronometre Artisans Rose Gold

Simon Brette is the son of a carpenter from France. That detail matters more than anything else you will read about this watch because the defining design element of the Chronometre Artisans, a polished gold dovetail joint on the side of the case, is a direct tribute to his father's craft. A dovetail is the strongest joint in woodworking. It is the joint a carpenter uses when something needs to last generations. Brette put one on his watch case in white gold against rose gold, and every time you look at the side of this watch, you are looking at a man honoring his father. That is the kind of detail that separates independent watchmaking from everything else.

Brette studied engineering. In 2011, he joined Chronode, Jean-Francois Mojon's movement development firm that builds calibers for some of the most respected independents in the world. He became a project manager at MCT, an avant-garde brand that builds watches with revolving prism displays. Then he joined MB&F, Max Busser's creative lab, where he managed movement concepts from initial research through to production. When you look at the Chronometre Artisans, you are looking at a watchmaker who learned from the best independent minds in the industry before building his own. He launched his brand in 2021 and his first watch, the Chronometre Artisans Subscription Edition, limited to 12 pieces in zirconium at 50,000 Swiss francs, sold out immediately. In 2023, the GPHG awarded it the Horological Revelation prize. That is the award the jury gives to a new watchmaker whose debut work announces a serious talent. They were right.

The Rose Gold edition is the one I want to talk about. Fifty pieces, 85,000 Swiss francs each, sold out before production began. The case is 39mm in 18-karat rose gold, 10.5mm thick, 45mm lug to lug. Those dimensions put it squarely in dress watch territory but it does not feel like a dress watch. The case has a screwed-down bezel and caseback providing 30 meters of water resistance, and the finishing alternates between brushed and polished surfaces in a way that gives the rose gold more visual weight than most gold dress watches manage. The dovetail is white gold set into the rose gold case band. It is the first thing your eye finds when you turn the watch on its side.

The dial is where this watch becomes something else entirely. The artist Yasmina Anti hand-engraves a pattern she calls Battle, which fuses two decorative techniques she developed: Dragon Scales and Tiger Claws. The result is a three-dimensional mosaic across the entire surface of a solid rose gold dial. After the engraving is complete, the dial receives a black DLC coating, Diamond-Like Carbon, which fills the recesses of the pattern and creates a depth that makes the surface look alive. The contrast between the warm rose gold peaks and the black DLC valleys gives the dial a texture that shifts constantly as light moves across it. I have seen hand-engraved dials from Kari Voutilainen, from Philippe Dufour, from the Geneva ateliers that supply the top maisons. This is in that conversation. The fact that it comes from a collaboration between a French watchmaker and an engraver working in a technique that has no precedent in traditional Swiss dial-making is what makes it genuinely original.

The Caliber SBCA is hand-wound, 33.3mm in diameter, beating at 18,000 vibrations per hour, 2.5 Hz. That frequency is deliberate. It matches the specification of a marine chronometer, the precision instruments that navigators used to determine longitude at sea. Marine chronometers beat at 2.5 Hz because the slower oscillation is more stable and more efficient than the 4 Hz frequency used in most modern sport watches. Brette chose it because the entire watch is built around accuracy and efficiency, not speed. Two parallel barrels provide 72 hours of power reserve. The balance wheel is large, free-sprung with adjustable inertia blocks and a Breguet overcoil hairspring. The stop-seconds mechanism uses a flexible S-shaped arm rather than a conventional lever, which is a detail that only someone who has studied movement architecture at the level Brette has would think to implement.

The movement finishing on the Rose Gold edition uses 5N gold bridges, which is extraordinary. Gold is soft. Finishing gold to haute horlogerie standards requires a different touch than finishing steel or German silver. The screw heads are concave and mirror-polished, set in solid gold chatons. The crown wheel uses wolf-tooth gearing, an older technique where the gear teeth are shaped asymmetrically to reduce backlash during winding. The chamfering is done by hand. Every edge is beveled and polished under magnification. Through the sapphire caseback, the Caliber SBCA looks like movement work from a maison with two centuries of heritage. It comes from a man who started his brand four years ago.

One of the things I respect most about Brette is his transparency. He publicly credits every contributor to the watch. The dial engraver, the case maker, the component suppliers. In an industry where many brands obscure their supply chains and present the finished product as if one genius made the whole thing alone, Brette names everyone. He calls the watch the Chronometre Artisans, plural, because it is the product of multiple artisans working together. The name is the philosophy.

The honest critique is availability. Fifty pieces at 85,000 Swiss francs, sold out before production. You cannot buy this watch. The subscription model, where all pieces are committed before they are built, means the Chronometre Artisans exists primarily as an idea for most collectors. You can admire it. You can study it. You cannot own it unless you were in the room when the allocation happened. That exclusivity is genuine, not manufactured. Brette does not have a factory. He does not have the capacity to produce hundreds of watches a year. The limitation is real. But it does mean that for most of the watch world, the Chronometre Artisans is a reference point rather than a purchase.

A steel edition was announced for late 2025 at a lower price point. That will bring Brette's work to a slightly wider audience, though the volumes will still be tiny. The rose gold remains the definitive version. The warmth of the gold case against the black DLC dial, the white gold dovetail, the 5N gold movement bridges visible through the caseback. It is a complete vision executed with a coherence that most brands never achieve. Simon Brette learned from Mojon, from MCT, from Busser. Then he built something that is entirely his own. The GPHG jury saw it immediately. The collectors saw it immediately. The 12-piece subscription and the 50-piece rose gold both sold out before they were built. That does not happen by accident. That happens when the work is undeniable.