Introduction to Manufacture Royale, the Enlightened Watchmaker
The first signs of the brand dates from 1770 when French enlightenment philosopher Voltaire established Manufacture Royale in a small town just outside of Geneva. This city is in France and is now known as Ferney-Voltaire in respect to the great thinker.
The manufacture had hundreds of watchmakers and produced important volumes for the time, but it gently disappeared in the vicissitude of time. It was then relaunched in 2010 but the main goal was not to benefit from some kind of far fetched historical link but more to position the brand on the values cherished by Voltaire.
The first watch that came out was a rather ambitious and very distinctive Minute Repeater, the Opera, which features a unique shell-like deployable system that augments the resonating characteristics of the chiming watch. This watch is till being produced in limited series and it set the stylistic reference for the second collection of the brand, the Androgyne. This watch also proposes a very unique design and the brand rapidly moved on to propose 4 collections, including a Tourbillon in it’s 1770 collection and even a double Tourbillon soon to be introduced.
One can note that the watches’ mouvements are all in-house developed thanks to a very special partnership with Tech Ebauche, an important supplier of the watchmaking industry.
