The first in a trilogy of articles dedicated to the outstanding Finnish watchmaker.

 

Kari Voutilainen was born in the city of Rovaniemi on the edge of the Arctic Circle in 1962. Finnish Santa Joulupukki is said to have been born there too, the chances of growing up to become a watchmaker in Lapland are slim. At the age of 13, Voutilainen began popping in and out of a watch-repair shop run by a family friend.

 

" I would go there and see the watches and clocks he was repairing, and the tools," Voutilainen recalls. Watches and tools were his two biggest interests and the key to his success as a watchmaker. This passion enables him to make his own watches relying almost entirely on his own resourcefulness.

 

Well, almost. He openly admits it'd be too time-consuming and require too much effort to make some components such as hairsprings and mainsprings himself, so he buys them from third-party suppliers.

 

Mr. Voutilainen grew up in Finland but now lives and works in Môtiers, Switzerland.Credit: Reto Albertalli for The New York Times
Mr. Voutilainen grew up in Finland but now lives and works in Môtiers, Switzerland.Credit: Reto Albertalli for The New York Times
Handcraft masterpiece is born
Handcraft masterpiece is born

For instance, he gets his hairsprings from H. Moser & Cie's associate company Precision Engineering, and his mainsprings come from the company Schwab-Feller. The hairsprings have a Breguet (Philips) overcoil, which are time-consuming and take experience and skill to make.

 

That's why the hairspring's outer coil is rarely shaped in this way in modern watchmaking, not to mention the inner coil. Components such as the jewels used in watchmaking, sapphire crystal and straps are also bought from specialized companies, which is common practice in the industry, perhaps the only exception being Seiko.

 

Voutilainen learned the tools of his trade at the world-renowned watchmaking school of Tapiola in Finland, which mainly owes its fame to having Voutilainen and Stepan Sarpaneva on its list of alumni. Voutilainen moved to Switzerland in 1989 to continue his studies at Wostep, and took a course on complicated watches.

 

Voutilainen 1994 Tourbillon Pocketwatch
Voutilainen 1994 Tourbillon Pocketwatch

He developed an interest in restoring high-quality rare complicated watches, so it's no wonder his first employer was the company Parmigiani Mesure et Art du Temps which specifically specialized in restoration work at the time. Once Voutilainen began working there, he had the chance to study the most outstanding works of horological art for himself.

 

The Parmigiani workshops were entrusted with restoring pieces from the finest collections, including watchmaking artifacts owned by the Sandoz Family Foundation and important pieces from the Patek Philippe Museum.

 

 

Watches and tools are two biggest interests of Kari Voutilainen  and the key to his success as a watchmaker. 

The masters working in restoration were also responsible for Parmigiani's most extraordinary projects after 1996 when the Parmigiani Fleurier brand was created and the watchmaker launched its own watch collection.  Voutilainen may have stayed on as a master restorer if it weren't for the push he received from fifth-generation watchmaker Charles Meylan.

 

He headed Parmigiani's restoration workshop and had taught Voutilainen all the ins and outs and traditional watchmaking methods. Meylan encouraged Voutilainen to make a watch of his own in his spare time. Voutilainen took his advice and decided to follow in the footsteps of the watchmaking greats by making a tourbillon pocket watch.

 

Voutilainen 1996 First-Minute Repeater Turning Bezel
Voutilainen 1996 First-Minute Repeater Turning Bezel

He spent about two-thousand hours of his free time on it, and finished his first pocket watch in 1994. In 1996, the Musée International d'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds invited Voutilainen to exhibit his watch in the Le Tourbillon exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the tourbillon's inventor Abraham-Louis Breguet.

 

Experts and representatives of the industry spotted Voutilainen's work at the exhibition and they liked what they saw. The exhibition had two results for Voutilainen. Peter Baumberger who owned the Urban Jürgensen & Sønner brand at the time wanted to buy Voutilainen's watch there and then, but Voutilainen wouldn't sell it to him, although they did agree to work together to develop a detent-escapement movement suitable for wristwatches.

 

The prototype developed in partnership was finally introduced in 2011 as a chronograph-escapement movement by Urban Jürgensen. Voutilainen also received a commission at the same exhibition to make a minute repeater with a vintage movement as its base.  This pocket watch would be referred to as a marriage watch now, as it uses a vintage ébauche LeCoultre movement. 

 

Voutilainen 2020 28SC blue pairly
Voutilainen 2020 28SC blue pairly

The repeater Voutilainen produced wasn't activated using a traditional sliding lever but by turning the bezel, and the gold watch case sported his characteristically rounded lugs to hold the strap, like the ones used on Voutilainen's 1950s Movado wristwatch. The watchmaker certainly has a soft spot for this detail, and it's now seen as a typical design element on his brand's watches.

 

Voutilainen returned to Wostep for a spell in 1999, but not as a student. He taught there until 2002, when he finally took the plunge and set up his own business as an independent watchmaker.

 

He found the right place for his workshop in the village of Môtiers, not far from the headquarters of his former employer Parmigiani Fleurier. At the beginning, all his business was generated from making watches ordered by other brands, but Voutilainen decided to change his approach in 2004.

 

His decision was spurred by a conversation he had with the famous independent watchmaker Philippe Dufour at the Baselworld trade show. When the conversation turned to a complicated mechanical watch presented at an exhibition by one of Voutilainen's client companies.

 

Dufour suggested that Voutilainen should step out of the shadows cast by other watch brands and invest all his energy in his own brand. Voutilainen was told something along the same lines by Vianney Halter, another independent watchmaker. Voutilainen  arrived at Baselworld one year later to present his Masterpiece 6 decimal minute repeater and plans to make more one-of-a-kind pieces for the Masterpiece series.

 

He showcased his timepiece at the collaborative booth shared by members of the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indepéndants (Kari Voutilainen became a member of the AHCI in 2006). This watch featured Voutilainen's new development for minute repeater wristwatches: the so-called decimal minute repeater, which chimes the hours, ten-minute intervals and minutes instead of the traditional hours, quarters and minutes in minute repeaters.

 

 

Kari Voutilainen became a member of the AHCI in 2006.

It's worth noting that Voutilainen can't be considered the original inventor this function. The English watchmaker John Ellicott first used it in pocket watches. In 1747, he made the earliest known decimal repeater pocket watch still preserved to this day. Its inventor may actually have been another eminent English clockmaker by the name of Daniel Quare, yet Voutilainen was the first to equip a wristwatch with the function.

 

This isn't Voutilainen's only innovation. He has another technical trump card up his sleeve from traditional watchmaking. Those who've heard the Masterpiece 6 in action can appreciate the difference it makes. That card has a name — Gideon Levingston — a jeweler, fellow artisan and friend of Voutilainen.

 

Levingston has helped Voutilainen on a number of projects, including the decimal minute repeaters in the Masterpiece series. Wristwatch cases are now usually made from solid metal, where an ingot is stamped and formed on a lathe and/or milling centers.

 

Voutilainen 2013 Zodiac GMT piece unique
Voutilainen 2013 Zodiac GMT piece unique

An alternative traditional technology was adopted for the watches in the Masterpiece series, where the jeweler works a thin sheet of material by hand instead of using ingots to achieve the shape of wristwatch case components.

 

This used to be done for pocket watches, which tended to feature striking mechanisms or repeaters far more often than wristwatches do now. The Masterpiece wristwatch has more space inside thanks to this traditional method, while the way the metal is worked using its own tension contributes to creating a favorable resonance.

 

A richer and more sonorous tone is produced as if by magic if you forget about the work that's gone into making the case. Looking back from today's point of view since the watch was released, Kari Voutilainen must have had a very clear idea of what his trademark style was going to look like when he began creating his own collection.

 

Voutilainen 2011 Vight-8
Voutilainen 2011 Vight-8
Voutilainen 2011 Vight-8
Voutilainen 2011 Vight-8

The watch was given a round, meticulously polished case with convex teardrop lugs to attach the strap, an exquisite guilloché dial with delicately foregrounded functional zones, which in turn were decorated with different types of guilloché, gold applied hour markers, the signature "HAND MADE" inscription instead of the almost obligatory "SWISS MADE", and bimetallic Breguet hands.

 

The hands deserve greater attention, as they're considered one of Voutilainen's main innovations in terms of design. They're are made of meticulously polished gold with blued-steel circle tips press-fitted into specially prepared grooves. The Masterpiece 6 has filled-in circles while the watches he produced later have rings.

 

These hands are Voutilainen's creative reinterpretation of Breguet hands, and the most impressive design element on his watches, apart from the movement, of course.Like the Masterpiece 6 movement manufactured based on a ébauche by LeCoultre, the movements used in Voutilainen's other watches are beautifully and painstakingly decorated.

 

Voutilainen 2013 Sarasamon unique piece
Voutilainen 2013 Sarasamon unique piece
Voutilainen 2021 Green Garden
Voutilainen 2021 Green Garden

An art he's mastered and something he's considered one of the best at doing. The hand-engraved opening half-hunter caseback with a decorative pattern paved the way for Voutilainen's subsequent, exquisitely decorated watches.

 

To be continued