Cyril Brivet-Naudot

As grandson and great-grandson of watchmakers, Cyril Brivet-Naudot's attraction to what was known until recently as the art of watchmaking was a passionate, almost genetically-derived one that dates from his earliest years.

Cyril takes real pleasure in seeing a lever, a wheel, a shaft or whatever gradually take shape and emerge from the raw material under the action of a saw, file, chisel or other tool wielded by a human hand intent on honing its skills to achieve ever greater precision.

The movement of a timepiece, its chimes and imagining what they might announce move Cyril like poetry, as indeed does the terminology of the watchmaker, taking him from secret to surprise. For him, restoring old timekeepers is to plunge into the astonishing savoir-faire of past masters, acknowledging their legacy and admiring the genius of their ideas.

An exercise all the more humbling when you consider that such prowess was accomplished without the technology we now enjoy, without today’s materials and without electricity.