Time could also be divided into previous, current and future, however for the unbiased Swiss watchmaker Ludovic Ballouard, the one time that counts is the current.
It’s a philosophy he developed the laborious approach, by means of private struggling and loss. Watching his spouse, Eveline, endure most cancers for 10 years took a toll. “I spotted you must stay within the second,” he stated. “Time is now.”
Mr. Ballouard’s work, identified for being progressive but iconoclastic, expresses his carpe-diem lifestyle. On the rule-breaking Upside Down watch launched in 2009, 11 of the hour markers are displayed the wrong way up on the dial — the one one right-side up tells the present hour, the current.
As he sipped espresso in his atelier about six miles exterior Geneva, he took one in every of his Upside Down watches out of its case and confirmed the way it labored, turning the fingers till the quantity of the present hour flipped up. Then he confirmed the clear, skeleton again, with the B01 motion he created, and identified that he had used 200-year-old strategies. “I bought the concept after I was repairing outdated watches,” he stated.
His different watch model, the Half Time with the B02 motion he created, got here out in 2012 in homage to Eveline, who died in 2017. The watch, he stated, expressed the “spirit of affection as two items on the dial come collectively” to point out the time. The hours on the dial are unreadable aside from the present one. “The previous is gone,” he stated. “The longer term is unknown,” and solely the current hour “clicks in place, so that you deal with the current second.”
His Upside Down and Half Time watches are “a really basic design, not show-offs, however basic with problems,” he stated. He works in pink gold and platinum and dials will be malachite, meteorite, aventurine, lapis lazuli, osmium or studded with diamonds, enameled or guillochéd by the famous horologist Brittany Nicole Cox, who “solely works for me,” he stated.
The numerals on the custom-made watches will be Roman, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese language or Thai. The buckles on the often-alligator straps type the letter B. Every watch is offered in a field made from oak from Brittany, France, the place Mr. Ballouard grew up.
The ready record for his watches is eighteen months and that’s fantastic with him. “We wish to stay small,” he stated. The worth of the usual Upside Down mannequin with a platinum case is 87,000 Swiss francs, or about $76,000, excluding taxes, and the costliest Upside Down with an osmium dial is 180,000 francs, excluding taxes.
The watches are made in his atelier within the village of Avusy in a 200-year-old constructing that after was a publish workplace. His work room, whereas compact, is open, ethereal and fashionable, with one huge sq. work desk for him and two assistants. Final yr they made 35 watches — 30 Upside Down, 5 Half Time.
Satisfaction of place is given to an vintage pendulum clock that had been in his household residence in Brittany. As a toddler, “I all the time listened to its chimes,” he stated.
Again then, his ardour was airplanes and his passion was constructing mannequin planes from scratch. In 1989, he graduated from watchmaking faculty in Rennes, France, and labored in Dinard restoring the devices and timepieces on airplane instrument panels.
“It was the most effective expertise,” he stated. “Most of the items have been historic,” and in repairing them he realized the various methods they’d been constructed over time.
Decided to pursue a profession in watchmaking, he moved to Geneva in 1998. He bought a job on the luxurious watchmaker Franck Muller and stayed for 3 years.
Alongside the best way, Mr. Ballouard met Eveline, who labored at Vacheron Constantin, and he then started freelancing for that model earlier than signing on with F.P. Journe for seven years.
The expertise was great, he stated. “After 4 years I began making the Grand Sonnerie,” a sophisticated, prestigious kind of watch. “The extra the problems,” he stated, “the extra it pleases me.”
In 2009, after the monetary disaster hit the business, Mr. Ballouard stated F.P. Journe downsized and he was out of a job. He had been considering of beginning his personal model, and Eveline inspired him to take action.
“She advised me to comply with my coronary heart,” he stated, including that due to the disaster, “suppliers had a whole lot of time. They wanted prospects. I might ask for something, and I didn’t have to attend. I might get actions in two months as an alternative of two years.”
Losing no time, he began Montres Ludovic Ballouard — now referred to as merely Ludovic Ballouard — and by the top of 2009 he had launched the Upside Down.
One notably prestigious task got here from Harry Winston to create the Opus XVIII watch, and to take action in simply 11 months. He employed employees to assist, and the watch debuted at Baselworld in 2013.
However his spouse “was getting increasingly more sick,” he stated. “That’s after I realized the previous is gone, the longer term is unknown. Solely the current second is actual.”
So he set about creating a brand new current. Inside months of her loss of life, he moved from busy, bustling Geneva to Avusy, the place he has a cottage close to his atelier along with his spouse, Flavia, an Italian enterprise govt, and their 5-year-old son, Gabriel.
Mr. Ballouard stated he entertained shoppers and watch followers in Avusy. His specialty is raclette, which he serves within the discipline, with a view of grazing goats, utilizing a tractor as a serving desk.
One shopper who Mr. Ballouard stated was a daily customer is Edward Tonkin, a retired automotive supplier in Portland, Ore., who owns two Upside Downs and one Half Time, the primary one Mr. Ballouard made.
“I fell in love with this wonderful, distinctive, never-before-done-and-not-since-either timepiece, however not almost as a lot as I fell in love with Ludo,” he wrote in an e mail.
“His creativity is aware of no bounds, and he’s a most passionate curator of his craft,” Mr. Tonkin wrote. “ A real watchmaker in each sense of the phrase.”
Mr. Ballouard, nevertheless, insists that the creation he’s proudest of is Gabriel. Collectively they’ve began what the watchmaker calls “a collaboration, Ludovic Ballouard et Fils.”
“Gabriel is such an artist, he made his personal watch,” Flavia stated. It’s referred to as the Gaga Watch — Gabriel’s nickname — and options the kid’s design of vibrant colours on the face of the Upside Down.
It’s the watch his father wears, day-after-day, previous, current and future.
