Discovery of the Hervé Schlüchter workshops

It was on the day of the spring equinox that Hervé Schlüchter announced the birth of his eponymous workshops, located in Biel/Bienne, in the heart of a magnificent historic building surrounded by spacious grounds. And it is amid this greenery that the timepieces created by the master watchmaker come to life.

After more than 20 years of working for major watch brands, Hervé decided to free himself from the constraints of time in order to work at his own pace while enjoying total freedom of expression, giving free rein to his creativity, nourished by the experience, high standards and skills he has acquired over the course of a career that has personally prepared him for the start of this new chapter.

Exploring new horizons! Placing freedom at the heart of the creative process! Building a new embodiment of contemporary classical watchmaking by imagining what the great masters of the 18^th century could have created today. Putting human beings at the centre of this new expressive territory. These are the motivations that drive Hervé Schlüchter today.

Over the years, Hervé Schlüchter has acquired tools from the past, those that enabled watchmakers to produce and decorate each component of the movement and the watch case themselves. Wheels, pinions, pallet-levers, balances, bridges, dials, hands, etc... each part is thus crafted by the watchmaker’s agile fingers. They are then assembled in the serene setting of this timeless workshop. Hervé likes to say that he “cooks” for his future clients, like a great chef who prepares dishes with countless flavours and that are as beautiful to eat as to look at. During the process of creating a timepiece, he thinks of the future owner of the piece, while already looking forward to handing it over to him.

As an extension of a well-thought-out artistic development, Hervé Schlüchter is working assiduously on a major project comprising several timepieces called Tree of Life. These watches will be bound by a certain logic, the common theme being a tribute to the watchmaking artisans of the 18^th to 20^th centuries. Each chapter of the work will be technically different, yet will contain a deep desire to pass on a philosophy, a tribute and expertise running across time and generations – hence the workshops’ motto “Creare durare”, create to last. Hervé thus sees his vision as intimately bound up with time, sharing and transmission. The first opus, which will see the light of day at the end of the year, is powered by an all-new movement, the “HS-01”, endowed with watchmaking specialities of yesteryear, to which each owner can add a personal touch to make the piece one of a kind. Hervé will say no more for now and the suspense thus remains complete until the day the first watch, named “l’Essentiel”, leaves his workshops.

The first pieces of the Tree of Life project have already been sold by subscription to a community of national and international collectors. Some have placed pre-orders for the entire work in order to guarantee the watchmaker’s cherished sense of cross-generational transmission.

While Hervé’s mentors include Antide Janvier and Georges Daniels, his master is also Philippe Dufour, who guides him in the mastery of this traditional watchmaking art. The two men share the same passion for historical watchmaking, hand-crafted one part after another without any time constraints, exclusively for the beauty of the skill itself and the love of this peerless manual work.

Hervé Schlüchter has already planned the expansion of his workshops in the historic Renfer Park villa, where other artisans will soon join the current team. A vibrant tribute to humanity, to sharing, to watchmaking and to Life, the timepieces of this exceptional watchmaker have a bright future ahead of them.

June 30, 2022