Spotlight: Laurent Ferrier

This Spotlight article is the next in Watch Affinity’s series partnering with UK-based independent watchmaking specialist retailer, The Limited Edition, looking to showcase different independent watchmakers and brands to highlight what they have to offer in the ever-expanding watch market. In this piece, I’ll be taking a more in depth look at one of my personal favourite brands, Laurent Ferrier.

Be sure to read to the end to find out how you can get a little bonus with any order at The Limited Edition as well!

The brand itself was founded relatively recently in 2009, but the brands namesake and founder Laurent Ferrier has had a stellar 40-plus year career within the world of watchmaking upon which the foundations of his brand were built…

Laurent Ferrier – The Story

As a child in Geneva, young Laurent Ferrier grew up around watches – both his father and his grandfather were watchmakers, with his father working on high complication movements. The path that lay ahead was almost predetermined in this sense, and indeed he went on to become the third-generation watchmaker in his family. He did however have another passion that often comes alongside a passion for watches, but more on that later!

Laurent Ferrier attended watchmaking school, and graduated as the best in his class, ultimately presenting his Montre d’École – or school watch – in 1968 at the age of 16. This school watch was a pocket watch, the design language of which remains inherent in many of the watches across Laurent Ferrier’s collections today and indeed the watchmaking values of the man himself, which he describes as “simplicity, precision, and pure uncluttered beauty.”

At the time that Ferrier graduated from watchmaking school, it was tradition for Patek Philippe to take on the top one or two graduates from the school, and so it was with Laurent Ferrier. He spent a year working on a quartz display chronograph project which was ultimately abandoned, before the lure of his second passion for motor racing turned his eyes briefly away from watchmaking.

He left Patek Philippe and got a job working in the car industry, primarily to ensure that he could have the necessary time to prepare his car on a Friday for the weekend’s racing! This didn’t last long, with Laurent Ferrier returning to Patek Philippe shortly afterwards in 1971, instead using his annual leave time to indulge in his passion away from watchmaking.

This passion for motor-racing was largely successful, too, and unbeknownst to Laurent Ferrier at the time would even have a massive bearing on the formation of his own brand decades later.

Away from the watchmaker’s benches, he started racing regularly and before long was racing on tracks including the legendary Le Mans, where in 1977 he actually won a race in 1977. Around this time, he met François Servanin, another driver in the racing community. They formed a great friendship, bonding over a mutual love of all things mechanical. As a pair, they even went on to place third in the Le Mans 24-hour race in a Porsche 935 – not only that, but they placed behind a certain Paul Newman.

With the prize money from the race, Ferrier gifted a Patek Philippe Nautilus to François Servanin with ‘Le Mans 1979’ engraved. The pair had often talked about how one day they might take on a joint venture together, but that the time would have to be right…

After Ferrier had re-joined Patek Philippe in 1971, what followed was an incredible 37-year career working to reach a director role and head of product development; indeed, one of the earliest projects at Patek Philippe went on to become simply one of the most iconic watch designs – Gerald Genta’s design for the Nautilus that he went on to gift to his dear friend.

I asked Mr Ferrier whether he looked back on any special projects or moments during his time with Patek Philippe with particular fondness:

“The Aquanaut was made in a very short time, I had an idea to make a less sophisticated case that kept the codes of the Nautilus and that could be mounted with a leather or composite strap.

“The super classic Calatrava 2000 was also a very pleasant model to realize, in fact all the models required concentration on the small details, which was each time what made the beauty of the exercise.”

Just two years before his planned retirement, Laurent Ferrier decided that 2008 was the right time for he and his good friend François to finally come good on the joint venture they had talked about all those years ago. The allure of total creative freedom in his watchmaking was too good to turn down, and by 2009 the Laurent Ferrier brand was announced to the world.

Laurent Ferrier – The Brand

Since its 2009 launch, the Laurent Ferrier brand has grown to encapsulate five distinct families of watch, each of which can be easily identified as a Laurent Ferrier, owing to a distinctive design language which we first saw in the 1968 Montre d’École pocket watch. The brand also continues the family tradition, with Laurent’s son Christian joining him at the helm and becoming the fourth generation of the Ferrier family to embark on a career in watchmaking.

The first watch created by the brand was quite the statement, too – the Classic Tourbillon with a double spiral movement, released in 2010. Every single detail, no matter how small, has been thought about carefully and done with reason – the typography, the choice of Roman numerals, the colours of each detail, the unique shape of the hands, the Galet (French for ‘pebble’) case, and the utterly fantastic movement with a tourbillon, front and centre.

The ‘double spiral’ refers to the two springs used in the balance wheel, which are layered one above the other, and in opposite directions. This works to stabilise the movement in both springs simultaneously, serving to eliminate the minute errors caused by gravity in a similar vein to Breguet’s tourbillon invention.

Everything about the watch comes together to evoke a sense of classical watchmaking from the 18^th and 19^th Centuries; it is almost orchestral – the total impact is far greater than the sum of its parts.

This watch in fact went on to win the 2010 Best Men’s Watch award at the GPHG (Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève), and this clearly meant the world to Mr. Ferrier – when I asked him how it felt to see his name on a watch for the first time, he responded:

“It was when we won our first prize with the first classic Tourbillon, in Monaco in June 2010, that I had the first tear in my eye!”

Following the success of the Classic Tourbillon, the brand’s ‘Classic’ family of watches continued to evolve and in 2011 introduced the Classic Secret, whereby a hidden, second dial can be revealed from underneath the top dial which can retract by actuating a pusher built into the crown of the watch.

The following year, this was joined by the Classic Micro-Rotor, introducing an automatic calibre for the first time. The aesthetic on the front of watch is very similar to that of the Classic Tourbillon, with the idea being that the Classic Micro-Rotor is a more accessible piece than a tourbillon, with a different piece of ingenuity to marvel at within the movement.

This movement is not only aesthetically stunning; it also includes a contemporary implementation of another of Breguet’s complex inventions, the natural escapement, which is designed to reduce sliding friction within the movement and preserve energy.

The next addition to the Classic family came in 2013, with the introduction of the Classic Traveller. Watches with a travel time indication, or GMT-hand, are incredibly popular. With this release, Ferrier sought to put his own spin on the travel time complication, and also to resolve an issue he had identified whereby the date display is normally tied to home time as opposed to local time, and also unable to go backwards.

Laurent Ferrier achieved this through using an integrated movement, where the additional components required to facilitate the travel time complication are integrated within the baseplate of the movement rather than adding a separate module for it.

The display of the Classic Traveller introduces an aperture at 9 o’clock for displaying the local hour time (which is a little larger than the date aperture at 3 o’clock to allow the wearer to distinguish between the two), with pushers at 8 and 10 o’clock for moving the local hour back or forward by an hour. Thanks to the integrated movement, adjusting the time backwards past midnight will also move the date backwards too.

In 2015, the ‘Galet’ case was updated to introduce a more contemporary cushion shape, and when it was introduced was the first time that the brand had offered a watch in steel. After it was introduced, Laurent Ferrier won a second award, this time taking the Horological Revelation title at the 2015 GPHG Awards.

When I visited Geneva, I was fortunate enough to be able to try some Laurent Ferrier watches on, one of which was the Galet Square with an ice blue colour dial. Quite honestly, this is one of my favourite watches I have ever had the pleasure of trying for size, and it immediately found itself on my list of grail watches! I was able to try a few different pieces on for size, making for an experience that I really and truly enjoyed.

Above, you can see another example of the Classic Traveller on the left – notice the pushers at 8 and 10 o’clock with the slightly larger local time aperture at 9 o’clock – the Galet Square with ice blue dial in the centre, and the École Annual Calendar on the right with its sector dial display.

The École family of watches launched in 2017 with a new round case design, that was intended to allow for different complications to be incorporated. Laurent Ferrier ended up looking to his school pocket watch from 1968 for inspiration and ultimately ended up naming this family École as a testament to the inspiration behind the case design. Today the family includes a regulator display, annual calendar (shown in the earlier photo) and also a minute repeater which was introduced in 2019.

For the annual calendar, Laurent Ferrier has again done something incredibly innovative with the movement, just as with the Classic Traveller. With calendar complications, one normally finds a series of corrector holes surrounding the case-band which when pressed will advance a specific display on the calendar, be it the day, the date or the month.

However, what Laurent Ferrier has achieved is making the entire movement adjustable through the crown and a single pusher positioned at 10 o’clock – that is the hours, minutes, day, date and month – both forwards, and backwards.

The pusher at 10 o’clock adjusts the day of the week, and the crown has two positions when pulled out. In the first position, the date can be moved either forwards or backwards. By combining a forwards and backwards wind into a single motion, the month can be advanced. The second position then enables the hours and minutes hands to be adjusted. The result? The École Annual Calendar’s innovative movement, with a case-band unblemished by corrector holes, went on to win Laurent Ferrier the Men’s Complication Watch Prize at the 2018 GPHG Awards.

More recently, Laurent Ferrier has released the Grand Sport Tourbillon – a limited edition of just 12 luxury sports watches including a tourbillon complication, and a magnificent, limited edition green dial Classic Origin which was very quick to sell out, with a stunning green dial.

So, what’s next for Laurent Ferrier?

Personally, I think the brand is somewhat of a “sleeper”. After all, with only 150-200 pieces produced a year, they certainly tick the box of being scarce and unlikely to be something you come across on the wrist of others. As regards the quality of the watches, they speak for themselves, having won no less than 3 GPHG Awards and it is hard to imagine anything less than perfect being born of the hands of someone who spent more than four decades at Patek Philippe.

With independent watchmaking on the rise, surely it won’t be long before Laurent Ferrier’s star garners appreciation from wider circles. If the brand were to become one of the “next big things”, in my humble opinion it would be deservedly so.

I asked Mr Ferrier what he would hope to see for the future of the brand he started:

“To keep the same philosophy. Discretion and aesthetic purity, and quality of the movements, their finishing… and the pleasure of having it on your wrist. May it last a long time, and may my son continue what we started together in 2009.”

In Summary

I can still remember the first time I held a Laurent Ferrier watch, and with the Galet Square ice blue dial (above) it was one of the few instances where a watch has given me a thunderbolt feeling. Just holding it, trying it on my wrist, and admiring every single detail – it is evident that the watch has been born of the hand of someone who honed their craft at arguably the finest watchmaking manufacture in the world for nearly four decades.

It was honestly incredible.

In addition to the quality of the timepieces, the story of the team behind the brand is certainly one to appeal to a broad audience, after all, how many master watchmakers have also placed on the podium of the Le Mans 24-hour race? And then placing behind another name synonymous with the world of watches in Paul Newman?

Laurent Ferrier as a brand remains a small, family-owned outfit, with Laurent Ferrier and his son Christian at the helm, and I for one am certainly excited to see what they have in store for us over the coming years.

I hope that from having read this, you will have learned something interesting about the brand, and if you want to learn more be sure to visit the Laurent Ferrier website, and for those of you in the UK you can look to purchase Laurent Ferrier through our partners at The Limited Edition.

Be sure to mention “Watch Affinity” when speaking with the team at The Limited Edition to receive a small gift with any order!

If you have any questions, please get in touch via our Contact page, or via our Instagram.

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• Independent Watchmaking – An Ode to the Indies
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• A Watch Aficionado’s Guide to Geneva – Part 1
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More about Watch Affinity’s Partnership with The Limited Edition

As smaller entities, independent watchmakers and brands are far more susceptible than those with corporate backing to the economic effects that will inevitably be felt following the Covid-19 pandemic, and so I felt it was important for me to try and do something to help.

The result of this was Watch Affinity’s partnership with The Limited Edition, a UK-based retailer specialising in independent watchmaking, and even working directly with indie brands, watchmakers, and collectors to collaborate on unique pieces, too. I will publish regular articles such as this, shining the Watch Affinity Spotlight on an independent watchmaker or brand, in an effort to showcase both the brand and their timepieces and spread the word. Pandemic-pending, perhaps even coverage of some exciting events, too!

Co-Founder of The Limited Edition, and GPHG Academy member Pietro Tomajer says of Laurent Ferrier:

“In becoming Laurent Ferrier’s official retailers, The Limited Edition have checked another fundamental box in the quest to fully represent the world of independent watchmaking. 

“If creativity, quirky design and mechanical sophistication have become synonymous of the world of contemporary independent watchmaking, there is also a more laid-back and subtle way of embodying all the elements of this beautiful art. 

“In Laurent Ferrier’s production nothing is too loud or outspoken, the sense of independence comes from the freedom the artist takes in revisiting some of the ancestral codes of classic watchmaking, rather than revolutionise them as other independent watchmakers have tried to do by pushing the design codes as well as the mechanical complexity, to the extreme.

“The result is an incredible, tasteful interpretation that leaves very little to imagination when classicism, mechanical sophistication and incredible finishing come together as a production that can easily be defined as ‘extremely pure’. 

“The Limited Edition completes its array of independent watchmakers with a brand that speaks of classicism and purity, and yet with their very defined artistic touch.”

Remember to mention “Watch Affinity” when speaking with the team at The Limited Edition to receive a small gift with any order!