Bovet

Édouard Bovet was working in London in 1822 when he sold four watches in Canton for the equivalent of a small fortune, and founded a company on the strength of it. For the rest of the century Bovet made watches specifically for the Chinese market: enamelled, engraved, often in matched pairs, with movements finished on the bridge side because Chinese buyers expected to see the mechanism. The name became a general word for a pocket watch in parts of China.

The company was revived in Fleurier and has been owned since 2001 by Pascal Raffy, who bought it as a collector rather than an investor and has kept production small.

Its signature is the Amadeo case, introduced in 2010: a system of hinges and a detachable bow that lets one watch be worn on the wrist, carried as a pocket watch, or stood on a desk as a table clock, without tools. It is an unusual thing to build in the twenty-first century, and it descends directly from what the company was doing in the nineteenth.

Bovet holds 1 model, from £19,995 to £19,995. Half cost less than £19,995, and a quarter less than £19,995. 1 of 1 is automatic. Prices are checked nightly against the retailers’ own feeds.

1822

Édouard Bovet founds the company on the China trade

2001

Pascal Raffy takes ownership and returns production to Fleurier

2010

The convertible Amadeo case is introduced