This watchmaker arrived on the haute horlogerie scene in 1998 like a supernova exploding in the sky, with his unforgettable Antiqua watch.

 

That’s not exactly what it looked like in reality. The Swiss watch industry has experienced a strong rebound since the late 1980s, thanks to a general rekindling of interest in mechanical watches. The most promising opportunities for young ambitious watchmakers opened up in Switzerland. 

 

In 1990, Vianney Halter and his friend François-Paul Journe, who would go on to become the founder of his own F. P. Journe Invenit et Fecit brand, were joined by another Frenchman Denis Flageollet, now the director at De Bethune. Together they founded the company Techniques Horlogères Appliquées (THA) to manufacture complicated movements.

 

In 2007, the company was acquired by the watch brand Carl F. Bucherer. Each partner had his own view on what a modern high-end watch should look like, which is unsurprisingly why they ended up parting ways. However, each of them managed to realize their full potential. Three wonderful new brands appeared on the Swiss watch scene and went their own separate ways.

 

Vianney Halter stayed in the Swiss village of Sainte-Croix on the foothills of the Jura mountains where THA was based after leaving the company. He set up his own company there, and he named it Janvier SA after his idol Antide Janvier — a 19th-century French clockmaker who built remarkable astronomical clocks.

 

Halter’s first Antiqua watches were built according to all the canons of Swiss watchmaking. It was a rare type of perpetual calendar — extremely rare at the time — which instantaneously switched day and date indications at midnight on the dot. It used an aesthetic ultra-thin automatic caliber from the Nouvelle Lémania watch movement factory as its base.

 

Halter’s first Antiqua watches were built according to all the canons of Swiss watchmaking

This alone would not have been enough to create a sensation, but Vianney Halter had another couple tricks up his sleeve to include in the watch. First and foremost, it had an extravagant and extraordinary design. Instead of the single unified dial for all the calendar indications that perpetual calendars normally have, Halter set not one but four separate dial displays into the cylindrical case, each in its own porthole riveted to the case.

 

There's a separate dial for (1) the hour and minute hands, (2) the weekday, (3) the date, and (4) the month / leap cycle. The watch won people over with its original design, clearly inspired by the steampunk aesthetic, a style which had just made its way into watchmaking. The best description of this style would be retro-futuristic avant-garde or even science-fiction, as the first thing that comes to mind when you look at these watches are the kind of contraptions from pioneering works of science fiction by Jules Verne. 

 

Vianney Halter Antiqua (Image © Revolution)
Vianney Halter Antiqua (Image © Revolution)
Vianney Halter Antiqua (Image © Revolution)
Vianney Halter Antiqua (Image © Revolution)

Secondly, Halter did a terrific job at modifying the automatic movement he used as a base. He fitted it with a "mystery mass" winding rotor, which had a transparent sapphire disk with no visible part between the peripheral rotating mass and the caliber center. The rotor could function without obscuring the view of his top-notch movement. Fans of haute horlogerie weren’t the only ones able to appreciate the true value of this invention.

 

A number of brands borrowed from its impressive design without paying its author any well-deserved royalties. This would unfortunately not be the last time Vianney Halter failed to negotiate with brands, whose pieces he helped create. The Antiqua was followed by watches which were masterpieces in their own right, united by what was a very successful retro-futuristic sci-fi style.

 

The Classic watches are more classic in terms of their shape, but of course they have the mandatory gold or platinum rivets around the cylindrical case and crown. A Lémania movement was also modified for these watches, which also features the patented VH "mystery mass" winding rotor.

 

Vianney Halter Classic Hour Minute Second Hand
Vianney Halter Classic Hour Minute Second Hand
Vianney Halter Trio DayNight
Vianney Halter Trio DayNight

Then came the Trio watch in an arched ingot case with (initially) three dials riveted to it, each in its own flange: (1) hours and minutes, (2) small seconds, and (3) date. Soon after the Trio was released, Halter decided to make it more complicated by swapping the ordinary date display for a grande date in two separate portholes, and that's how the model received its fourth dial, although the name wasn't changed to Quatro to reflect this increase.

 

A day / night indicator also appeared on the main dial, made in the same way masters used to render moon-phase apertures in pocket watches. The brand's direction was never clear-cut or predictable. Halter decided that the steampunk was getting a bit much at some point, and he developed a new sleeker Antiqua design in 2000 without the rivets or exaggerated masculinity. The watch was named Contemporaine.

 

The Trio watch was equipped by three dials riveted the case, each in its own flange: hours and minutes,  small seconds, and date

 

The original version with a perpetual calendar was called the Contemporaine Perpetual Calendar, which was followed by models with a double calendar moon-phase display called the Contemporaine Moon Phase (2001). The Contemporaine design was altered almost beyond recognition in the incredible Satellarium Unique Piece, where the separate flanged dials were transformed so that its three portholes formed the case itself.

 

Only two Satellarium pieces seem to have ever been made: one commissioned by the brand Goldpfeil in 2001, and a second in 2008. Halter created another vintage-style model for serial release called Jumping Hour for Goldpfeil. The watch's rectangular curved case couldn't be neater, with three separate dials (yes, more separate dials, but shaped differently), and it bears a slight resemblance to an old camera.

 

Vianney Halter Contemporaine Perpetual Calendar
Vianney Halter Contemporaine Perpetual Calendar
Vianney Halter Satellarium
Vianney Halter Satellarium

Vianney Halter's participation in the Harry Winston Timepiece Division's Opus project was another sensation. The Opus saga got off to a spectacular start. Halter came up with unique functional characteristics and a unique design for the Opus 3 watch (2003). The digital display for the current time and date consists of six windows, which are lined up in two rows on the watch case like the portholes on the submarine Nautilus in Jules Verne's novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea".

 

Sensation was followed by scandal when it came to light that Halter had only produced one (presumably) working  pre-production prototype for the intended release of 55 pieces, and then refused to continue working for the jewelry and luxury watch brand. The epic quest to relaunch the ingenious movement Vianney Halter had invented dragged on for at least seven years until Harry Winston finally commissioned Giulio Papi's Audemars Piguet Renaud et Papi (APRP) to produce the entire series.

 

Nevertheless, Opus 3 is still perceived as a Vianney Halter watch by the public for its extravagance and inventiveness. Other partnerships formed in 2005 and 2006 didn’t turn out to be very successful either. Halter is the master of extravagant watchmaking, which is probably why inventor and designer Jean-François Ruchonnet approached him.

 

Vianney Halter Harry Winston Opus 3
Vianney Halter Harry Winston Opus 3
Vianney Halter Harry Winston Opus 3
Vianney Halter Harry Winston Opus 3

Ruchonnet had decided to launch his own Cabestan project based on a movement design with a linear layout that displays the time digitally on cylinders and has a vertical tourbillon and fusée-and-chain transmission. Vianney Halter bailed again, who developed a working prototype but didn't take it any further.

 

Nevertheless, Halter raised his profile on this project, which only served to grow and strengthen his reputation as a brilliant watchmaker. Halter decided to discontinue the Classic series in 2007 — a classic move to boost demand for collector's watches. He unveiled a complicated version of this model one year later with the familiar "mystery mass" rotor, equation of time, an orbital moon phase indicator, and an annual calendar on the other side.

 

In 2018, Halter had a very worthy occasion to release another Classic watch — the brand's twentieth anniversary

 

The watch was named Vianney Halter Classic Janvier Lune et Soleil (Moon and Sun). In 2018, Halter had a very worthy occasion to release another Classic watch — the brand's twentieth anniversary. This Anniversary watch released in a limited edition of 20 pieces wasn’t just a reproduction of the original Classic.

 

The master's signature is displayed on the Anniversary dial. The Nouvelle Lémania movement used in earlier models has been replaced with the unique automatic U30A caliber, manufactured for Halter by his friend and independent watchmaker Andreas Strehler, and the "mystery mass“ winding rotor features again.

 

Vianney Halter Classic Janvier Sun & Moon
Vianney Halter Classic Janvier Sun & Moon
Vianney Halter Deep Space Tourbillon Resonanse
Vianney Halter Deep Space Tourbillon Resonanse

The 2008 financial crisis dealt the company a hard blow. The watchmaker needed to come up with something new, and the Deep Space Tourbillon came to him in a dream. Watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine before bedtime probably helped. The space station was suddenly transformed into a triple-axis tourbillon by the watchmaker's imagination, spinning in a void beneath the sapphire dome of the watch case.

 

The watch presented in 2013 was awarded the Innovation Prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG). Vianney Halter began thinking about releasing an even more complicated mechanism based on the Deep Space Tourbillon around that time, where the tourbillon would be equipped with two balances acting in resonance. He’s still busy developing that watch to this day.