Antoine Martin is a Swiss luxury watch brand co-founded by master watchmaker Martin Braun and entrepreneur Antoine Meier. BRUNO JUFER was appointed as its CEO in 2010.
Antoine Martin has its own watch manufacture at the heart of Switzerland, in Alpnach near Lucerne.
The first watch collection from Antoine Martin was a Perpetual Calendar with Big Date, developed and manufactured in the company’s own workshop. The next creation was a Tourbillon with a Perpetual Calendar.
At Baselworld 2013 Antoine Martin unveiled the Slow Runner, the first and only wristwatch in the world to operate at 7200 beats per hour, or just one hertz.
Martin Braun is a trained watchmaker and qualified design engineer. He discovered watchmaking through his father, a trained goldsmith who had carved out a successful career for himself making gold watchcases. After qualifying as a watchmaker and studying design engineering, he picked up further invaluable experience in his father’s company.
After completing a master’s course at watchmaking school in Pforzheim (Baden-Württemberg), Martin Braun turned his attention to restoring old movements requiring a high level of technical expertise, such as perpetual calendars, tourbillon escapements or minute repeaters.
Parallel to this, he set up a training centre for watchmakers and taught courses to watch devotees. It was precisely these courses for watch lovers – many of them very technically versed – that repeatedly threw up specific questions and ideas, and which made him basically rethink the whole concept of mechanical watchmaking. On top of that, he had very clear-cut ideas as to how the Swiss lever escapement could be significantly improved.
The next stage came when Martin Braun started developing calibres with new complications. These included a calendar that shows the precise time of sunrise and sunset for every day of the year. Another calibre to emerge from a workshop that generates one new idea after another has the most precise moon phase display of them all. He then designed a third movement for globetrotters who need to see the current time in all other time zones at a glance.
The watch industry followed his achievements with rapt attention. Finally, Franck Muller Watchland managed to integrate Martin Braun as a proprietary brand in its empire. But this was to prove a temporary arrangement. Martin Braun wanted to reclaim his entrepreneurial freedom and founded the Manufacture Horlogère Obwalden, headquartered in Alpnach.
In 2011, with the launch of Antoine Martin, he realized his dream of setting up an integral watch manufacturing company under the motto “Mastering Perfection”.
In December 2013, BRUNO JUFER left the company and Martin Braun took over the helm of Antoine Martin.
Featured Timepieces
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