A ten-time winner on the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, the annual business occasion typically referred to as the “Oscars of watchmaking,” Kari Voutilainen is among the many most prestigious figures in unbiased horology.
And in March, his work truly went to the Academy Awards: Cillian Murphy, who received greatest actor for “Oppenheimer,” wore a yellow gold brooch by the Hong Kong design home Sauvereign that Mr. Voutilainen had completed in guilloché, the ornamental patterning that has grow to be his signature.
However Mr. Voutilainen, who has lived and labored in Switzerland for greater than 30 years, has not forgotten his roots. In late April, he visited his native Finland to open a small however complete exhibition showcasing his profession.
“Voutilainen: The Artwork of Watchmaking” is scheduled to run by way of Sept. 29 on the Finnish Museum of Horology and Jewelry Kruunu in Espoo, a metropolis simply exterior the capital, Helsinki. The exhibition options 31 watches by Mr. Voutilainen in addition to sketches, pictures and movies related together with his work.
Regardless of a spring snowstorm on the opening day that disabled Helsinki’s community of road trams and briefly halted its gentle rail system, about 130 folks turned out to greet Mr. Voutilainen, who grew up within the northern port metropolis of Kemi and attended the Finnish College of Watchmaking, headquartered in Espoo.
“It’s been actually attention-grabbing,” Mr. Voutilainen, 61, mentioned in a cellphone interview a number of days later. “The exhibition has made me actually cease and take into consideration what we’ve got been doing for the previous 35 years. And I begin to understand that we actually have been doing a number of issues.”
These “issues” have included designing timepieces for his non-public label, Voutilainen; overseeing his case- and dial-making companies and, most lately, renovating a former horology faculty in Fleurier, Switzerland, right into a guilloché atelier to work on his creations in addition to these of shopper manufacturers.
Mr. Voutilainen mentioned the brand new workshop, scheduled to open in August, would use instruments and machines that when belonged to Brodbeck Guillochage, the workshop of the acclaimed guillocheur Georges Brodbeck, and do enterprise below that identify.
It additionally will permit his personal model, headquartered within the Swiss city of St. Sulpice, to broaden. By basing a few of its artisans within the new atelier, the model “can have a number of watchmakers extra and we will make a brand new workshop for the distinctive items, small collection and prototypes,” he mentioned. “So we could have rather more area.”
“Why Not?”
Mr. Voutilainen mentioned he initially was hesitant to just accept the museum’s provide of an exhibition. Collectors in the USA and Europe must conform to mortgage their watches after which ship them to Finland, which might not be simple, he mentioned.
However, “with extra considering, I used to be considering, ’Really why not?’” he mentioned. “It’s a method to present the work that we’ve been doing. It’s additionally for me a method to present the era of younger guys what we’ve got been doing, and that we will do issues with our lives, nevertheless it takes time and motivation and vitality.”
The exhibition additionally options the ten fashions from the Voutilainen X Leijona assortment, his collaboration with the 117-year-old Finnish model Leijona that started in 2019. (Leijona watches, in keeping with its web site, have been “the primary watch owned by many Finns” — and Mr. Voutilainen was amongst them.)
One exhibit is especially pricey to Mr. Voutilainen: a pocket watch he created in 1994 whereas working for the restoration atelier Parmigiani Mesure et Artwork du Temps. “It was my free-time work,” he mentioned. “I used to be working, however I did that work throughout my night time and on weekends.”
Two years later, the tourbillon timepiece was displayed at an exhibition in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, bringing him to the eye of collectors and different watchmakers. (A tourbillon is designed to counteract the results of gravity on a watch’s timekeeping accuracy.)
Mr. Voutilainen mentioned he paid homage to that pocket watch this yr with a small collection of tourbillon timepieces, one in every of which has been included within the exhibition.
“So these two issues,” he mentioned — referring to the pocket watch and the brand new tourbillion — “they’re fairly significant for me in the best way that they’re connecting somewhat little bit of historical past.”
Watches and Jewellery
The museum formally opened in 1988 because the Finnish Museum of Horology within the basement of the Finnish College of Watchmaking, which was based in 1944 and moved to Espoo in 1959 from Lahti, a metropolis about 105 kilometers (65 miles) north of Helsinki. The museum, which has moved a number of instances through the years, got here to its present 220-square-meter (2,370-square-foot) website in 2021
Essi Pullinen, the museum’s director, mentioned that very same yr it expanded its focus to incorporate jewellery. And, she added, it determined to retailer its everlasting assortment of watches and clocks to create area for six-month-long exhibitions of labor by Finns resembling Mr. Voutilainen, in addition to the occasional small, short-term show, too.
In 2022, for instance, the museum displayed creations by the jewellery designer Bjorn Weckstrom. His model, Lapponia, was Finland’s best-known jewellery identify internationally till it was discontinued in 2020. (Amongst “Star Wars” followers, Mr. Weckstrom is well known for his Planetoid Valleys necklace, which Princess Leia wore within the ultimate scene of the primary movie.)
In response to Ms. Pullinen, who’s a goldsmith, the museum’s twin focus has been well-received by watch and jewellery lovers.
“Watches and jewellery in Finland have historically been offered collectively in the identical retailers,” she mentioned. “So, within the eyes of the client, they’re nearly like one.”
