For little over 40 years now, his brand Andersen Genève has offered passionate watch collectors a chance to create a personalised timepiece. Unlike most brands that mass produce watches for the public, Andersen Genève specialises in the opposite—making pièce unique, or just one timepiece for one person. Based in Geneva, the brand has created and delivered more than a hundred such ‘dream watches’ to enthusiasts around the world.
Born in Denmark in 1942, Svend Andersen started making watches at the age of 15. After completing an apprenticeship in Denmark, he opted to get a diploma from the Danish Watchmaker School and eventually moved to Switzerland in 1963, where he first started working with jeweller and watch retailer Gübelin in Lucerne and Geneva in their after-sales service. He learnt and enhanced his skills in watchmaking in Switzerland and hasn’t left the country since then. After four decades in the industry, Andersen is still passionate about watchmaking, learning it and sharing it.
A Clock in a Bottle
Looking for a challenge, it was in 1969 when Andersen, as a creative pursuit, decided to put a watch inside a bottle. It would prove to be a turning point in his career. “I got the idea on New Year’s Eve while looking at a clock through an empty bottle,” he says. Executing it, though, was not easy. He started by creating long tools to complete this task. “The challenge was to develop special tools to assemble the parts inside the bottle. Another challenge was to cut in parts all the components of the movement so that every part could ‘go through’ the bottleneck of only 18mm in diameter. The last was to assemble everything inside the bottle.” Andersen’s Bottle Clock was displayed at the Montres et Bijoux Show, an international trade show for watchmaking and jewellery, eventually earning him the moniker ‘Watchmaker of the Impossible’.
Andersen’s creations got Patek Philippe’s attention and in 1969, they offered him a position in their Atelier des grandes complications or ‘High Complications Atelier’, where Andersen spent nine years. “I worked on the worldtimer complication module from Louis Cottier and also on perpetual calendars. I also had to restore many historical timepieces,” he says. And then he went on to start his own workshop.
“I started in 1980, just after the quartz crisis, because collectors asked me to redesign and remake gold cases for complicated pocket watch movements. ‘If you can put a clock into a bottle, you may also be able to do such work’, they said,” explains Andersen. By the mid-1980s, Andersen had started to create unique wristwatches according to the collectors’ wishes, including those with complications like perpetual calendar, annual calendar, and jumping hour calendar, so much so that it became a niche for his brand, Andersen Genève.
Turning Ideas Into Reality
The creation of Andersen’s first worldtimer complication dates back to 1989 when, by creating the thinnest worldtimer of only 0.9mm, including the dial, he also set a world record. Naturally, with it came popularity, and in 1992, he went on to craft a second series of worldtimer watches called the Christopher Columbus. The collection gained massive success, and has been the brand’s most produced collection—500 timepieces. This does not mean that Andersen Genève mass produces watches; the maison has created fewer than 1,300 watches since its establishment, but does produce limited-edition watches. “We have so many artists involved in our timepieces. We don’t want to downgrade the quality and exclusivity of our timepieces, and therefore we make only limited-edition series of timepieces,”
says Andersen.
Since the year 1994, Andersen has made custom watches inspired by ancient Greek eroticism. The gold watches look like elegant timepieces from the front, and turning them over reveals painted erotic automatons. He also introduced the concept of Montre à Tact in his watches, where the entire dial can be customised and the time is displayed through a small window on the dial, or on a rotating disc aperture between the lugs.
His latest watch is the platinum Jumping Hour Rising Sun Edition, limited to 50 timepieces. It was unveiled at the residence of Switzerland’s ambassador to Japan in Tokyo. It was designed with the signature mechanism of the brand—the aperture at 12 o’clock displays the jumping hour, while the minutes are tracked at the subdial at six. The ‘magic losange’ guilloche engraving adorns the 18K gold dial with the hobnail pattern on the subdial. The watch has been nominated for the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) 2023 in the Artistic Crafts category.
Together We Win
Collaborating with collectors to create unique timepieces is a large part of the brand’s ethos now. “We are listening to the collectors. They bring new ideas, and we start a journey together. It is wonderful to collaborate with passionate people and to help them get their dream watch,” he says.It was this approach that led him to create one of his most recognised worldtimer watches, the 2023 GPHG-nominated 39mm gold Tempus Terrae Aquamarine Baguettes, adorned with baguette-cut aquamarines.
It is also important to talk about the 2021 Andersen Genève × BCHH ‘Celestial Voyager’ for Chinese collector Benjamin Chee. The watch was a dual-crown platinum worldtimer watch featuring a cloisonné enamel dial with a world map at the centre and aventurine city rings surrounding it. “Benjamin Chee asked us to make a worldtimer in 2020. We have had a wonderful journey together and the watches that we created together are full of details and craftsmanship,” says Andersen.
One of the highlights of an Andersen Genève piece is the artistic craftsmanship. To realise this, Andersen brings in artists who are experts in enamelling, hand engraving, miniature painting, and hand guilloché. Miniature paintings are also his speciality. “Over the last few years, we have been collaborating with new artists mastering enamel that we could adapt to our movements.”
Andersen also collaborates with other watchmakers—with Konstantin Chaykin, he created the Automaton JOKER, which bagged him another GPHG nomination in 2018. A 42mm watch crafted in red gold, it housed a manual-winding mechanical movement that offered 36 hours of power reserve. The highlight was the back of the watch, where there was a miniature automaton of a ‘dog playing poker’. The watch also follows the concept of Montre à Tact.
Over the years, Andersen not only kept training himself but other watchmakers as well. “My first ‘pupil’ was Franck Müller. He stayed for seven years with me and we serviced together many Patek Philippe watches that are today at the Patek Philippe Museum.” They even developed a perpetual calendar watch together. Andersen also worked with watchmakers like [Urwerk’s] Felix Baumgartner. “The list is long,” he adds. In 1985, he co-founded the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants (AHCI) with Vincent Calabrese, an independent Italian watchmaker. This non-profit organisation aims to promote the work and skills of independent watchmakers and extend their recognition and presence in public. Watchmakers like Philippe Dufour, F.P. Journe, Kari Voutilainen, Konstantin Chaykin, Aaron Becsei, among others, are part of it.
The future
Currently, the brand Andersen Geneve is managed by Pierre-Alexandre Aeschlimann, president and CEO, also a watchmaker who has been developing timepieces at the brand since March 2015. “Everyone breathes watchmaking and we are constantly pushing boundaries like never before. All aspects of our timepieces, inside and out, improved a lot, from the development of the complications to the finishing of the components of the movement.” The brand operates with small teams from two ateliers—one in Geneva overlooking the Rhone River where Andersen works along with three other watchmakers, and the other in La Chaux-de-Fonds where master casemaker Marco Poluzzi works with two others.
Andersen already holds six world records in horology—for the Bottle Clock, the world’s smallest calendar watch (6.5mm x 17.4mm), the most animated horological automaton, the thinnest worldtimer (the Mundus), the first secular perpetual calendar on a wristwatch, and the Hebraika calendar with Alain Silberstein. And having launched the platinum Jumping Hours Rising Sun Edition with an 18K pink-gold, hand-guillochéd dial in June, and whose delivery is slated for next year in 2024, Andersen says there are still more amazing projects in the pipeline. “We learned how to make gongs thanks to an artisan from Vallée de Joux,” he explains. He is currently working on a minute repeater for a collector who came to him with a Lange movement he owned. He is also working on two new highly complicated timepieces that will be incorporated into two new collections. The watches are likely to be launched in the coming year. “We would like to satisfy more demands from collectors with such projects,” he says.
This article previously appeared in WatchTime India Oct-Dec 2023 issue
Images: Courtesy brand
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