SYLVAIN PINAUD ON THE ORIGINS OF HIS WATCHMAKING PHILOSOPHY

Sylvain Pinaud is an independent watchmaker based in the Jura mountains of Switzerland. The son of a watchmaker, Pinaud frequented the workbench from childhood, developing an early interest in horology that led him to the renowned Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau, where he completed a four-year Baccalaureate, graduating in 1998.

From 2000 to 2004, Pinaud worked at Franck Muller Geneva, specialising in high complications—perpetual calendars, tourbillons, and minute repeaters—while also handling after-sales service. He then transitioned to high-end clock restoration at Atelier Dominique Mouret Sainte-Croix, where from 2004 to 2009 he restored museum pieces from legendary horologists like Abraham-Louis Breguet, Ferdinand Berthoud, and Antide Janvier. This immersion in historical masterworks profoundly shaped his aesthetic philosophy: he learnt to appreciate the harmony achievable with simple forms, an approach he describes as trying to make complications 'in the simplest way.' In 2009, Pinaud joined Carl F. Bucherer in Sainte-Croix, spending eight years working on development, prototyping, and laboratory work for new calibres.

Since 2018, Pinaud has practised watchmaking independently, guided by what he calls 'the feeling of creativity.' Drawing inspiration from skateboarding's rule-breaking spirit and alternative culture, he approaches watchmaking as experimental territory. His method involves trying everything himself first—even spending weeks learning processes he'll eventually delegate—to understand each aspect intimately. He debuted in 2019 with the Monopusher Chronograph, winning the Meilleur Ouvrier de France competition, followed by the Origine in 2022, which earned the GPHG Horological Revelation prize. Featuring a 13.2mm balance wheel at six o'clock and horizontal asymmetrical layout, the Origine embodies Pinaud's conviction that chronometry is watchmaking's most noble pursuit. Currently producing 10 to 12 pieces annually with a small team, he remains focused on mechanical transparency and sober aesthetics. We spoke with him about restoration as education, the philosophy of experimentation, and why the balance wheel deserves centre stage.

Growing up with a watchmaker father, you gravitated towards skateboarding and punk rock. Was this rebellious, or did these creative pursuits inspire your path into watchmaking?

I enjoyed it all for what it was, not necessarily as a means of rebellion. I think I was quite cool with my parents. Adolescence is a difficult moment, but I was more attracted to the feeling of creativity. I've skateboarded for a long time, and still skate to the post office. It's more about the feeling of creativity, sports that you can create, a kind of art with. That's the same with music or painting, drawing. I took a lot of time to draw and paint when I was a child. All this alternative music or sports have their own creative universe, also visual, also in the image. You have a lot of nice drawing, nice attitude, and also freedom. I think I'm a free guy. I always want to be free and curious about what I can discover in non-mainstream things.

Do you think skateboarding helped you look at watchmaking differently?

Skateboarding and watchmaking—my way of making watches is a little bit rebellious. I don't make crazy, strange watches, but at the beginning, when I was in school, I was dreaming of being independent and creating my own watch. It was at the end of the nineties when I finished school, and frankly, I was perceived as a strange and rebellious guy. Imagine: you can be independent and create your own watch. I very quickly understood that you can work in a factory, in a workshop, but you can also create your own thing with your own idea. You can invent mechanisms, you can break rules, make experiments. So that's also the purpose of skateboarding or music: to break rules, to imagine different things. The rebellious part for me is there.

You grew up in the south of France, in the Alps?

Yeah, I grew up near one of the biggest cities in the Alps, that's surrounded by mountains and ski lifts. I practised a lot of mountain activities—skiing every weekend, every day during the holidays. I'm a mountain guy.

What was your experience at Morteau like? Was it liberating to work with your hands rather than just study academically?

When I was around 14 or 15, typical school didn't interest me much. I was good in technical education and the artistic classes, but we didn't have many hours of that. Studying French or languages didn't interest me during school.

My first dream was to become an architect. I was drawing houses and always dreaming of the perfect house, a perfect place to live—a little bit naive, but what could be a good place to be happy and to live. I remember I drew a lot of houses, but I didn't work hard enough to be an architect, so I had to choose. I was always with my father in his workshop, playing with clocks and cuckoo clocks. So, just like that, I decided to go to Morteau.

My father was working on restoration in a small boutique, and I imagined that was all watchmaking was. I heard you could go work in a company to do assembly in Switzerland, but in France at this time, there was nothing after the quartz crisis.

After two or three weeks at Morteau, I remember seeing the older students in different levels of the school. I went to see what they were doing. They worked on machines, they made their own components, and I said, 'Wow, you can actually make many other things.' I quickly understood that it could be really interesting.

I remember that after one month, I was working at night. I stayed in Morteau for two months before going back home for 40 days. Every night you could work—there were little benches available—and I remember I quickly wanted to master more, to understand, to practise, and to go faster.

When you went back home between terms, did you work in your father's workshop?

Yeah, he tried to catch me when I was in town. It was like free labour. But it was good practice, and you have to dismantle a lot of things to understand how they work. Each company makes things differently—movements are different, and that's fascinating.

Did you work on any memorable clocks or watches that were really special?

During my career, I've worked at several different companies. I remember when I worked for five years at Franck Muller at the beginning of my career. At that time, there was only a small atelier and a few watchmakers who made special watches in the basement, and it was really enjoyable to be trained in that spirit, in that workshop, and to work with very skilled watchmakers. I was 20 and they were 50, so they taught me a lot. Maybe I was the only one who wanted to play with the lathes they'd left in the back of the workshop and to make tools, to make some special adjustments. It was very cool. At that time, at Franck Muller in general, you could see very impressive minute repeaters with chronograph and tourbillon, and that was crazy for me. At that time, at the beginning of the century, they were the most complicated watches you could see in the industry. And sometimes they made watches with chronograph and tourbillon, and then the customer would bring the watch back, and they'd add a split-seconds and a perpetual calendar.

Before Franck Muller, you travelled across Asia when you were 20?

I thought, if I don't travel when I'm 20, it will be too late. I was completely free. When I left school, I went directly to work in a small company in Annecy, where I did after-sales service, but in a very industrial way. You dismantle an ETA movement per day, and in a week, you can do an ETA after-sales service. It was very intense. It was a good way to learn many things, but after two years, I was a little bit disappointed by that. I'd saved some money and decided to travel with my wife. We travelled for five months around Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, all that part of the world, like backpackers, and discovered total freedom.

After Asia, you spent a season in Chamonix?

When I came back, it was during summer, and I decided to spend one season in Chamonix, at the highest point of the Alps, to only ski and work as a seasonal worker. I took a one-year break from watchmaking. After that, I joined Franck Muller in Geneva and worked five years there. After, I had the opportunity to move to Sainte-Croix with a clockmaker, a famous clockmaker, Dominique Mouret. Geneva was too busy for me—too much traffic! I felt the need to go to a quieter place. This opportunity was huge because in clock restoration with objects, you work a lot with the lathe, milling machines. You learn all the old skills. We made our own brass with a more yellow colour. You do your hammering of the steel, and you can make some crazy stuff like that. You see some very cool pieces.

What pieces did you restore at Sainte-Croix?

I worked on two resonance pieces from Antide Janvier—the one at the Patek Museum and the one at F.P Journe. So I restored these two clocks. I worked on a Breguet marine chronometer and a lot of things like that: singing birds, all that kind of stuff. Only big names, you know—Breguet, Raingo, Lépine—huge names. And you can feel the aesthetics. You can feel the harmony with simple forms because they had simple tools. I try to keep that spirit in my watchmaking. When I draw a watch or a complication, I always imagine how I can make this in the simplest way. That's my spirit.

When restoring pieces from makers like Antide Janvier or Breguet, do you start to think like them?

You have to think like them because you need to find a way to have the same spirit if you have to make a new part because the original is missing or broken. You have to imagine how they worked, and they all have their different ways of working. Maybe Janvier is more in a straight line with less polished bridges. You have to understand that: what is this feeling? It's more about the technical side. And the other one, Breguet, is maybe more about the small forms, aesthetics, like that, and you have to play with that. You have to understand that, and you also use a lot of books and documentation, so you read a lot. Where I was working, Dominique had a very big library, and you have to immerse yourself in what their intention was with this object. The more you practise, you know what the specialities of each of these watchmakers are. Breguet at the beginning came from Switzerland—you can feel that too. You can feel that Swiss spirit a little bit in his watchmaking that he kept later in Paris. The other one grew up in Paris with a different style.

While restoring clocks from different makers, were you gradually forming your own DNA through their work?

Yeah, you see a lot of things and you're like a sponge. Some aesthetics, some ways to make bridges or springs mark you, and finally, like a sponge, it's inside you. The way you draw afterwards is inspired by that. It's a mix of all the cool stuff I see, different ways to make screws. For example, in my watch, I use a screw with two holes for the barrel—a big screw is cool with two holes. Like that, you can have good force without damage. I saw that in a marine chronometer. That's the kind of stuff. I take a lot of pictures and documentation of the things I like. Today, when I feel I'm in a new creation, I take time to spend, I don't know, one or two hours looking at my pictures and saying, 'Yeah, that's cool,' and to remix everything like that.

You worked with Vianney Halter?

Yeah, 20 years ago. He was one of the first I met when I arrived there. When I decided to become independent, I took a small workshop just next to his—we had our doors next to each other. When I decided to make my first watch, he helped me a lot, helped me with the tools I didn't have, gave me advice. I really admire him as one of the greatest watchmakers we have now because he's very creative. He's a true watchmaker at the bench, and I'm really in awe of what he's achieved with this level of complication in the tourbillons he makes now. He's nearly a single man at the bench, and that's crazy—all the things he masters. I love to share, and I have huge respect for him. He was huge support. It was him who pushed me to finish my prototype for the Origine and said, 'You will finish that for the exhibition, and you will come to exhibit with us at the AHCI.' I said, 'Okay, I will do it.' So I worked day and night to finish in time. He was huge support.

When did you become independent and create the Origine?

I started to become independent with the idea of making a watch for a contest we have in France—I have French nationality. It's called Meilleur Ouvrier de France. There's a category for watchmaking, and the subject was to make a chronograph. So the first watch I made was a chronograph. I had to draw everything myself—that's how I learnt CAD design. It took me one year to make this watch. At the end of that year, I received the prize, so it was great. But I went to exhibit at Baselworld in 2019, I think. I was alone in the mezzanine near some small watchmakers—a space they'd made—and everybody came and saw it and said, 'Wow, you're crazy, you've made a chronograph alone,' and I said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah.' And I said, 'I also want to sell it.' But, nobody wanted to buy it. After, there was COVID and everything changed, so I worked on small projects and began to think about the next watch. Finally, I presented the Origine in early 2022. It took me a long, long time to design and to be proud of the drawing.

When designing the chronograph, were you already thinking about making the Origine, or did that come after?

Today, when I open my book where I start all my projects with drawings, for the chronograph, I have a lot of designs that look more like the Origine, with a cartouche dial and things like that. But in the end, I didn't make them at that moment, but I have some iterations of the chronograph that are very close to the Origine. That's strange—not strange, but cool to see. I think the feeling with the chronograph and in my current watchmaking is that I show some mechanical parts at the front, try not to show everything, and try to have a good balance between mechanical and sober aesthetics also, to try to have legibility and to play like that.

How did the Origine change things for you?

I presented it at the AHCI during Watches and Wonders 2022. The same year, I won the GPHG Revelation prize, and everything started to change so fast. Before the Origine, I'd never sold watches. I was in my small workshop working on that. I still had my chronograph. When I presented the Origine, I put the chronograph in the setup, and finally, on the first day, I sold both.

Why did you remove 'Handmade' from later editions?

Some asked not to have it—to have something more pure, without it, with fewer words. I understand that. At the beginning, I wrote 'I made' because I was proud to make everything in the workshop and to make it in-house. Sometimes I was a little bit angry with some watchmakers who said, 'We make handmade,' but nothing is made by hand. So that was my way to say, 'Me, I made it.' I felt that sentiment. But I understand. Some customers said, 'Why do you write it? We can feel it's handmade.' I don't want to write 'Swiss made' or things like that either, because I'm not so... I won't say patriotic, but I'm not so attached to the country or things like that. It's made by me and my team. I put my name on the watch, and I think in the future it will be that, like a painting, you know.

Your balance wheel is always large. Is there a reason why?

It's part of my philosophy and my approach. One of my convictions in chronometry for a good movement—I'm a fan of a strong movement and big balance wheel, with the right balance of frequency, size, and weight. That's something I work on a lot. I think in all my projects, in all the future watches you'll see, I try to keep the balance wheel—well, the balance—as big as I can. That's really a feeling I like, and I'm a huge fan of the chronometric aspect. For me, one of the most challenging and pleasant parts to work on for a watchmaker is the balance wheel. That's why I decided to put this part at the front of the watch. Every watchmaker who comes here is quite impressed at the beginning when I put on the bench the balance stuff—the balance wheel, the springs, the hairspring, everything. It can take two days to perfectly regulate it, make your Breguet overcoil and everything. For me, that's one of the most noble parts of the watch.

Do you have any other unspoken philosophies for watchmaking that influence your creations?

One of my ways of working is to try everything. At the beginning, when I started with the Origine, for example, I tried to make everything myself. Even if in the end I don't make my dial myself, I want to understand how to make a silver dial. I want to understand how printing works. I want to understand how you can work with gold, how you can forge gold. It can sometimes take two weeks to experiment and to understand something, and afterwards I say, 'Okay, I will make it with this partner.' But when I work with a partner, I know how it works, and that's what really interests me: to understand everything and to only use materials that I know in their simplest way. At the beginning, the first Origine, the first prototypes, were without galvanic treatment. I only worked with German silver and silver without treatment and everything.