The House Of Bovet: Transcending From Pocket To Wrist
3 min read
With a history of 200 years, Bovet has been a stalwart of fine Swiss watchmaking that balances masterful marquetry and fine horological with ease, the house now welcomes its scion Audrey Raffy at the helm along with her father and owner Pascal Raffy to take the brand to new heights.
It doesn't sound crazy in the watch world when you say a brand is two centuries old, most of the iconic brands began back then, while some lost steam over the years, others built a legacy and Bovet is definitely one of them. The company was founded by Édouard Bovet in 1822 in London, UK and with a strong focus on aesthetics with highly finished dials, cases and movements. This was highly appealing to the Chinese market and the initial few years of the brand were spent solely supplying to this region. Through the 19th and 20th century the brand finally was bought over by Pascal Raffy in 2001 who also acquired movement, dial and gem setting manufacturers to establish a vertically integrated company.
“My earliest memory of Bovet is my father taking over the company and being so passionately involved, it was like seeing a completely new version of him” smiles Audrey Raffy, general counsel and vice president of Bovet as she mindfully recaptures what she can recall from the nascent age of 8. She unravels the maison as a family and explains how each employee has given her countless insights on the label and its inner workings.
In addition to being deeply passionate about the label, Pascal Raffy was also notably known to reduce the house’s production, a third of which was dedicated to custom one-of-a-kind creations. Over the course of over two decades of his ownership he has managed to bring back the legacy of the brand to its original glory, and forged Bovet’s rebirth as a statement to horological heritage and innovation.
“My father is an emotional man, he loves his family deeply and the brand too, infact, each of us now hold a piece of history that is titled to our names—mine comes in with the Miss Audrey line of watches, for my little sister he crafted the Miss Alexandra line and my brother’s name, Amadéo holds a patent in the system of converting Bovet watches from wrist to pocket and table without tools” explains Raffy.
With craftsmanship as key, today the house has a legacy of a completely swiss-made brand that makes everything in-house and has a wide selection of lines that are coveted by patrons around the globe. Some of the most notable ones include the Recital 29, 19thrity and Virtuoso Tourbillon.
