Introducing The Biver Automatique, Time Only, And Lavishly Luxurious

In 2023, Jean-Claude Biver launched his first watch, after having announced that he was launching his own brand the year before; the name of the brand is simply his last name, which at least in the watch world probably has better brand recognition than a lot of actual watch brands. Biver, on the very off chance you aren’t familiar with his work, is an industry lifer who began his career in sales at Audemars Piguet in 1974, which was to say the least, not an auspicious time to hitch your wagon to the dimming star of the luxury watch industry.

Biver persevered, and after AP worked at Omega before resurrecting Blancpain and relaunching it in 1983, along with his partner, Jacques Piguet. A master and inventive brand builder, Biver would end up selling Blancpain to Swatch Group ten years after the relaunch, for $43 million. He would then go on to take on the challenge of building Hublot into an international luxury watch powerhouse and in 2008, Hublot was acquired by LVMH for an undisclosed sum (sources at the time speculated that the price paid might have exceeded $900 million).

Biver was the head of LVMH’s watch and jewelry division from 2014 to 2018, when he announced his retirement, but in 2022, he and his youngest son Pierre founded JC Biver SA.

The Biver Carillon Tourbillon

The new brand’s first watch was, as anyone who has followed Biver’s career, a statement, in just about every respect imaginable. The Carillon Tourbillon Biver was a watch conceived, designed, and made, said Biver, “without compromises” and they were obviously designed to dazzle the eye, and show off the highest possible characteristics of both traditional and contemporary watchmaking. A minute repeater carillon with tourbillon regulator, the watch is a microrotor powered automatic and there is not a single surface on the case, bracelet, dial, or movement which has not been finished with anything less than an obsessive attention to detail, and to ornamentation for its own sake. Such an approach was and is divisive but there was no denying the baroque opulence of the watch – with hardstone dials in sodalite or silver obsidian, no less.

This year Biver – and his son Pierre, who is his partner in the company – chose to take a diametrically opposed approach, at least in terms of complexity. A carillon repeater – chiming on three hammers instead of the usual two – combined with a tourbillon is a tour-de-force exercise in complexity which very few brands have ever produced.

By contrast, the new Automatique is relatively simple and straightforward, at least from the standpoint of complications. You might have expected Biver to follow up the Carillon Tourbillon with another high complication, or combination of high complications – a rattrapante chronograph, or grande sonnerie, or perpetual calendar. Instead, the Bivers have chosen to produce a simple three hand automatic with center seconds.

However, the watches, though nominally simple, have a degree of elaboration in finish and general execution which exceeds even the very complex finishing in the Carillon Tourbillon watches.

This is a period in watchmaking history where, at least in the higher end and among independent watchmakers, movement decoration is being pursued for its own sake to an extent not seen for a very long time – in the 17th and 18th centuries it was not uncommon for watch movements to be lavishly engraved and even watches meant to address purely technical problems, like John Harrison’s H4 marine chronometer, had movements that were almost unbelievably ornate. Starting in the early 19th century, an increase in the use of mechanized production and the advent of more widely available precision watchmaking combined to encourage a more pragmatic approach. Movements from this period at the high end still showed an artistic touch in finishing, albeit one more austere; the elaborate scrollwork gives way to finishes that seem more a logical extension of best workshop practices rather than attempts at ornamentation for its own sake – and in any case, generally consumers could not see the movement.

Today, however, movement finishing has once again become an art form in its own right and is pursued for its own sake. There is hardly a surface on the movement which has not been deccorated, often with more than one ornamental technique.

The first train bridge, on the lower left, is a case in point. Normally such a bridge would have polished countersinks for the train jewels, and the flanks would be polished, with anglage applied to the edges and Geneva stripes on the upper surface. The screws would be in polished countersinks as well, and the screws would have polished bevels, polished upper surfaces, beveled slots with polished bevels and sides, and so on.

In the Biver Automatique, the entire upper surface of the bridge is recessed and engraved with a Clous de Paris or hobnail pattern (it sounds classier in French, like most things; hobnails are nails driven into the soles of boots to give better traction). The hobnail pattern is not uniform in its geometry; instead, the individual pyramids making up the pattern are larger at the edge of the bridge and gradually diminish in size towards the center of the movement, and the pattern has a curvature to it which matches the geometry of the edge of the bridge. The edges of the Clous de Paris area are beveled and polished, and follow the geometry of the screws and bridges and the jewels, screws, and even the steady pins sit in individually raised settings, each of which has a polished countersink. The uppermost surfaces are straight grained.

All of the train wheels have S-shaped spokes, beveled and polished and the degree of detail in finishing is consistent throughout the movement. It would be interesting to see what the cadrature, or under-the-dial work, looks like but having gone to the trouble to create such fantastically complex finishing on the visible surfaces I can’t imagine the hidden components would suffer by comparison (you never know of course, but it seems very unlikely).

Technically the watch is pretty straightforward, although there is an additional refinement in the form of a column-wheel and cam operated return to zero mechanism, which sets the seconds hand to zero when the crown’s pulled out to set the time – a feature intended to make it easier to set the watch to a reference time signal or clock. The movement, caliber JCB-003, was made in partnership with Dubois-Dépraz, who were founded in 1901 and who are perhaps best known today for their widely used chronograph and other complications modules, although the company also makes a full integrated automatic chronograph. Caliber JCB-003 is a classic 30.6mm x 4.0mm in diameter and thickness, with bidirectional winding courtesy a 22K gold microrotor, with a 65 hour power reserve.

Case dimensions are classic as well – in platinum or rose gold, the watch is 39mm x 10mm, with sapphire crystals front and back and a surprisingly robust 80M water resistance. The watch can be hand would (it goes without saying). The Biver Automatique comes in rose gold or platinum, with dials in rose or white gold to match the cases and the dials, and dial the furniture, while not as elaborately detailed as the movement, appear to be made to a very high standard as well. The elongated hour markers at the quarters, for instance, are polished on all visible surfaces, with a total of eight facets including one very minute triangular face at the upper inner end of the marker, and the seconds/minute track isn’t printed; it’s actually machined directly into the dial, with clearly defined inner and outer borders and a total of 240 individually defined, raised tick marks and numerals, and with a contrasting finely grained background as well.

A small number of watches will be made with hardstone dials, to continue the stone dial tradition established by the Carillon Tourbillon watches. The minerals used will be a matte-finish sanded obsidian (in a platinum case) or a mineral called pietersite, which is a form of the better-known chalcedony.

The obsidian dial has a dignified reserve but the pietersite dial is pretty spectacular – it looks like an aurora borealis over a nighttime volcanic landscape. The hardstone dial models have a less detailed minute track but this seems appropriate to the use of mineral dials; I think all those tick marks and numerals, would be a little too much of a good thing with all the detail in the stone dials.

The watches are of course, fantastically expensive. The rose gold and platinum models are CHF 78,000 on a strap and CHF 107,000 on a bracelet; the stone dial models are CHF 92,000 and CHF 121,000 for obsidian and slightly less for pietersite, at CHF 89,000 and CHF 108,000. For comparison, a Patek 5327R perpetual calendar currently lists for $106,640. Independents are probably a better benchmark; when Rexhep Rexhepi launched the Chronomètre Contemporain in 2022 it listed for CHF 125,000 (a jump up in price from CHF 55,000 just a year earlier). Thomas Fleming’s Series 1 launched at CHF 48,500 in gold; the J.N. Shapiro Resurgence is $85,000 in rose gold. The Biver Automatique, with its unique approach to movement design and finishing, reset to zero feature, and other distinguishing attributes is by comparison more or less on par with other small independent time-only timepieces, which are now – this is just the world we live in – going for what high complications from prestige brands used to go for less than a decade ago.

As a wise man remarked on Timezone.com many years ago, the answer to the question “is my watch worth what I paid for it?” is always no but there is plenty of room for real world nuance in the joke. The Biver Automatique is like no other watch in the world and represents a deployment of complexity and craft in design and execution which is difficult to match. If such time-only watches now list for mid-to-high five figures (or low six) that’s simply what the market will bear, and the market price may be daunting but I don’t think it reflects negatively on the interest of the Biver Automatique.

For more info, visit JCBiver.com.