Antoine Preziuso, a watchmaker with a difference

From his workshop in Plan-les-Ouates, Antoine Preziuso has a bird’s-eye view of the industrial zone that is now the favourite location for such major Manufactures as Rolex, Piaget, Patek Philippe or Vacheron Constantin. Yet so much separates these giants, with their hundreds of staff, from this watchmaker who has spent almost thirty years cultivating his art in complete independence with creations that fall deliberately outside the margins of standard production. Says Antoine Preziuso, “Customer satisfaction aside, what matters most is to take pleasure from being a watchmaker. Far be it from me to criticise the new brands that are springing up; brands which, granted, produce beautiful watches but the people behind them don’t create or conceive. Hardly a week goes by without someone calling me because they’re interested in setting up their own label. You can imagine my answer…”

The school of restoration

For Antoine Preziuso, who started out in restoration by opening the first structure of its kind for Antiquorum before setting up on his own, this independence is essential to his work. Don’t waste your time trying to force him to produce a batch of new models every year, as agents in the markets often do: the answer is no. Nor will he bow to requests to introduce a particular model to the collection. “For years people were trying to force me to make a chronograph, something I hadn’t yet done. But I refused for the simple reason I didn’t feel I could create something that would correspond to what I wanted. But the project matured and finally I made a power-reserve chronograph with a kind of compressed tonneau form and a very different display.”

Antoine Preziuso’s philosophy can be summed up in two words: difference and originality to satisfy aficionados in search of exceptional creations. “The people who buy my watches share a love of art, plastic beauty and above all timepieces that aren’t made by the thousand. This desire to stand out is something I encounter as much among a young clientele as among wealthy captains of industry, sultans and princes who often want a one-off creation. When I opened my boutique in Kiev, one of my Russian customers who had bought a platinum Flying Tourbillon came and checked in the catalogue that his watch was indeed the only one of its kind. He went home a happy man.” In order to satisfy these “demands”, Antoine Preziuso doesn’t hesitate to work to bespoke standards, personalising the dial, the form of the case or the materials used, or to produce very very limited editions. With annual production ranging from 500 to 1,000 watches, depending on the degree of complexity of each one – tourbillon with dual time zone and jumping hours, minute-repeater with perpetual calendar, resonance tourbillon – exclusivity is the key to Antoine Preziuso’s work. His three boutiques, in Geneva, Kiev and Osaka, are further illustration of this.

And now a machine workshop

This desire to “do different” is perfectly symbolised by the B-Side, a tourbillon watch designed to be worn in reverse. “More often than not we forget about, even hide, the reverse side of a watch when aesthetically speaking it’s certainly the most beautiful, akin to a sculpture. This inspired me to make this side the focus of attention while giving the B-Side a mechanism to pivot the case and read the time. Having said that, the days are gone when the watch was seen purely and simply as an object for telling the time, as time is now given everywhere. In fact I’m thinking of making the B-Side the sole theme of my next presentation at Basel. In a similar vein, we’ve launched a collection of “mechanical jewellery.” These are pieces of jewellery that incorporate an aspect of a watch mechanism. Their purpose is not to give the time but to pulsate with a moon phase, rotor or tourbillon.”

To better serve his ambitions, Antoine Preziuso, who works with his wife, son and daughter in a workshop that employs a dozen staff, is in the process of setting up CNC machines so as to be more reactive. “The advantage of a family firm such as ours is that we can take decisions and change strategic direction very fast. In fact we’re going to move towards more classic pieces in the future in that there is too much one-upmanship in complications while technical watches all look the same. Having said that, the watch industry is now totally congested. Delivery times are getting dangerously longer among contractors and the parts they deliver are often faulty. This is why we are setting up this machine workshop.” For Antoine Preziuso, the beat goes on.