Antique Wrist Watches

Louis Cottier
A Watchmaking Genius Ahead of his Time
by Osvaldo Patrizzi

This seems to me the ideal occasion to introduce not just the work but also the man. Louis Cottier was an extrovert, a kind man, a “Sunday painter” as he called himself, a constructor of automata and singing birds and of the shadow theaters called “ombres chinoises” in French, a lover of mecha-nical music, and a restorer of clocks and watches so talented that Alfred Chapuis, the well-known horological historian, recommended him to Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of Rolex, who entrusted him with antique watches the restoration and maintenance of his collection of antique watches.

Louis Cottier was born on September 28, 1894 in Carouge, a small Sardinian enclave which dates from the reign of the Bourbons. Even today Carouge’s architecture, town squares, churches, and even its inha-bitants, reflect the Italian influence of its origins. The antique watches atmosphere is indeed quite different from the Calvinist mentality that has so influenced Carouge’s larger neighbor, Geneva.

Cottier came by his talents naturally. His father Emmanuel was known as a maker of watches and automata and had a workshop in the rue Saint-Victor. Louis attended the Geneva school of horo-logy in the rue Necker, in the class of another impor-tant figure in Genevan horology, Henry Hess.

The teaching of this master profoundly influenced the young man and proved to be of great help to him in later years, particularly during the difficult time of the Great Depression. Once his training was completed, he worked as master horologist in seve-ral local factories. The economic crisis forced com-panies to drastically reduce production, certain of them closing down entirely. It is at this time that Louis Cottier decided to go into business on his own, working for 13 years in the back room of a book and stationery shop which his wife operated at rue Vautier 45 in Carouge. In this modest atelier he began his activity as a maker of desk clocks, pocket antique watches, wristwatches and hand-made pro-totypes. In the beginning, he made wristwatches without hands, and watches with jumping digital hours, as well as watches with automata and jacque-marts. It was in this workshop that his first World Time pocket watch was made in 1931 for Beszan-ger, a well-known local jewelry and watch shop.