I have said it before and I will say it again: in independent watchmaking, the watch is always the people. And the people behind Naissance d’une Montre 4 – Le Carrousel are, frankly, extraordinary. This is the debut piece of Bonniksen, a new independent house founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 2026. The name alone carries enormous historical freight, and the two men who chose it did so knowingly, deliberately, and with five thousand hours of homework to justify the decision.
Maximin Chapuis: The Scholar-Watchmaker
Maximin Chapuis is 30 years old. At that age, most watchmakers are still finding their footing. Chapuis, instead, has already trained under Michel Boulanger at the Paris school of watchmaking, sharpened his craft in the Vallée de Joux, contributed to historical restoration at Audemars Piguet Heritage, taught precision mechanics at WOSTEP, and joined the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in London as a Freeman. He also holds membership of the British Watch and Clock Makers Guild: the very guild Bahne Bonniksen founded in 1907.
His obsession with the Carrousel began during his student years in the Vallée de Joux, where he noticed how little rigorous technical literature on the mechanism actually existed. So he built the knowledge himself, through restoration work, archival research, and direct collaboration with the descendants of Bahne Bonniksen. Over 5,500 hours of research later, he had not simply understood the Carrousel, he had mastered it sufficiently to recreate it by hand in a wristwatch under 40 mm, for the first time in history.
Jason Chevrolat: The Strategist With a Collector’s Eye
Jason Chevrolat brings a different kind of depth. At 36, he combines a dual master’s degree in entrepreneurship and engineering with a career forged inside some of the most demanding ateliers in haute horlogerie: Jean Dunand, Christophe Claret, Bovet. He then founded Artcuracy, a consultancy dedicated to private collections and independent brands, and contributed to opening prestigious retail spaces for independent watchmaking across Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Chevrolat does not simply understand the business of watchmaking; he understands the collector, the object and the craft simultaneously. That combination is rarer than it sounds.
Together, Chapuis and Chevrolat have built a house on a radical principle: conceive, shape and finish every component by hand, in their own La Chaux-de-Fonds atelier, at the highest standard the tradition demands.
The Watch They Built
The Naissance d’une Montre 4 – Le Carrousel reflects these two personalities completely. The calibre presents an inverted layout with an atypical three-quarter plate, exposing the gear train in full. The Carrousel cage, a carried-wheel device with no fixed wheel on the main plate, rotates every 30 seconds, compensating positional errors caused by gravity with a mechanical robustness the tourbillon cannot match. A large central seconds hand sweeps the dial every 60 seconds, creating a hypnotic counter-rotation with the cage. Hours and minutes sit off-centre at 12 o’clock, carried by modernised English pear-shaped hands above a dedicated chapter ring. Screwed chatons, six-spoke wheels, black polish and a mainspring barrel boss complete a finishing vocabulary drawn straight from British horology of the 1870–1920 period.
A Project With Real Weight Behind It
The Time Æon Foundation, under David Bernard, a man who entered haute horlogerie in the Vallée de Joux in 1992 and joined Greubel Forsey before taking the helm of the Foundation, provides institutional oversight alongside the full endorsement of Greubel Forsey. That context matters. The Foundation produced NdM1‘s hand-made tourbillon and NdM3‘s chain-and-fusee. It does not associate itself lightly.
The Naissance d’une Montre 4 – Le Carrousel sells by application only. I suspect that for most interested parties, securing a conversation with Chapuis and Chevrolat will prove the real first hurdle, and a very worthwhile one.
