The 5 up-and-coming artisans to look out for in Louis Vuitton’s Independent Creatives Prize 2025
Borna BošnjakThe interest in independent watchmaking is undoubtedly on the rise, and if you needed any more proof of this being true, look no further than the powerhouse that is Louis Vuitton creating a special award for the year’s best independents. Raúl Pagès won the inaugural edition of the Watch Prize for Independent Creatives with his detent escapement-equipped RP1, and just last week, we found out the 20 semi-finalists, one of whom will follow in his footsteps.
There are familiar names on here, no less deserving to be part of the voting process for their prior success: J.N. Shapiro, Bernhard Lederer, and Stefan Kudoke are all established, well-known members of the independent community. I’m also glad to see those who spend less time in the spotlight recognised for their creations, in particular Daizoh Makihara and Australia’s very own Reuben Schoots. Rounding off the honourable mentions is a doff of the cap to the four-piece collective coming from China. With how the last few years have panned out, seeing an increasing number of Chinese watchmakers topping independent lists should become less and less of a rarity.
But rather than helping out the (more than capable, I’m sure) jury in selecting the five finalists, I thought I’d look at watches from makers you might not have read about on Time+Tide just yet. After all, I had to find a way not to include Kallinich & Claey’s Einser in a “best of” list once again, though I sincerely do hope they make it through to the last five.
Quiet Club Fading Hours
Japan’s Norifumi Seki made his name known to fans of independent watchmaking in 2020 by winning F.P. Journe’s Young Talent Competition with a wonderful, oversized moonphase pocket watch, and the Quiet Club Fading Hours is his first project alongside the duo of HK Ueda and Johnny Ting. It’s a tale of two faces: the dial side tells an utterly minimal story, while the open caseback showcases the complexity within. You could distil the Fading Hours down to being an overcomplicated, mechanical variant of your phone’s alarm, but it’s much more than that. The striking of the hammer is made all the more sonorous and clear as it actually strikes the back of the dial, moving vertically instead of horizontally like in a traditional minute repeater. There’s traditional watchmaking stuff too, with grand feu enamel inlays and German silver movement plates, but it’s all dressed up in a brutalist, modern package.
Fam Al Hut Möbius
Inspired by the Möbius strip, an infinite object with only one side and one edge, Chinese brand Fam Al Hut’s eponymous piece is just loaded with impressive specs. It sports a bi-axis tourbillon and a double retrograde time display, all housed in a compact, 24.3mm x 42.2mm case (though it is quite tall, as the sapphire bubble around the tourbillon brings it up to around 16mm in total). More curiously, if stainless steel isn’t quite your speed, Fam Al Hut is offering the Möbius in an amorphous zirconium case, a material similar to the bulk metallic glass (BMG) that Audemars Piguet uses for its bezels. I don’t want to distil all of this genius down to just the price, but at US$33,000 for the full zirconium package, this is one of the best value propositions of independent horology I’ve seen in a while.
Mineroci RD002
Though they both hail from China, Fam Al Hut’s and Mineroci’s attempts at a high-end, independent watch couldn’t be more different. Compared to the Möbius’ avant-garde form, the RD002 is decidedly traditional. Backed by self-developed movement design software, Mineroci created a calibre with a central jumping seconds and remontoir, and I’m especially fond of the beautifully symmetrical layout they achieved. The oversized balance is rightfully the visual centrepoint, but to its sides, the Reuleaux triangle-equipped escape wheel shows off its intricacy. The same can be said for the reverse of the movement, with the aforementioned symmetry emphasised by the finely finished steel components contrasting against the frosted, 18k gold surfaces.
Hazemann & Monnin School Watch
This list features another, more recent winner of Journe’s Young Talent Competition. If you’ve been keeping close watch, you might remember that it was the Hazemann-branded, blue-tinged design that won the prize. Well, the School Watch was actually designed as two separate pieces, combining the strengths of both young watchmakers, and ended up as two separate pieces that entered the competition. The openworked, blue design was Hazemann’s, while Monnin went with opal and malachite sub-dials. The movements, however, are identical, and especially compared to the Mineroci, throw symmetry by the wayside. And yet, its aesthetics are more than just pleasing, executing the sonnerie au passage and jumping hour complications with the kind of flair you’d expect from two young watchmakers looking to prove themselves.
Mgraver Ventrallis
Our final entrant is one that started as an accomplished collector, self-proclaimed as a lover of grand complications (but also much, much more). But Shiming Yang wasn’t quite satisfied with just collecting, eventually seeking to become an independent watchmaker himself. In an impressively low number of years, he developed the Ventrallis, an impressively three-dimensional creation with a one-minute tourbillon and jumping hours complication. It’s not only its origins that are unconventional, but the finishing too. Rather than being separated by sharp, bevelled edges (even though those are plentiful, too), all of the different planes seem to gently flow into one another, all housed under a highly domed crystal.