Est. 1887 · Lac de Joux
Time, kept the way the sea keeps it
Eleven heritage timepieces a year. Each wound by hand, guaranteed for a century, and finished until the gold holds the whole sky — dawn, dusk, and night.
Scroll — the light will change ·
The craft
Slow is not a compromise. It is the specification.
A Vesper movement begins as a sheet of German silver and a tide table. For one hundred and thirty-nine years we have cut our wheels beside the same cold lake, because the still air is kind to steel and the silence is kind to concentration.
Nothing in the atelier is automated that can be felt by hand. A bevel is finished when the light runs along it without snagging — an instrument no factory has managed to build.
11
Watches made each year640
Hours in every movement100
Years of written guarantee4
Generations of one familyThe movement
Calibre V-19: an argument in brass and ruby
Calibre V-19 Marée
Hand-wound, 21,600 vibrations per hour, 72-hour reserve. Every wheel cut in-house on machines older than the men who run them.
Guilloché by hand
Each dial takes eleven hours under the rose engine. No two wave patterns repeat; the lathe does not permit it.
19 jewels, zero shortcuts
Rubies set by hand, screws blued over an open flame, bridges bevelled to a mirror the eye reads as light.
A century of accuracy
Regulated to −1/+4 seconds a day and guaranteed — in writing — for one hundred years from the date of sale.
Ethical gold, 18 karat
Cases struck from single-origin recycled gold, hallmarked in Le Sentier, finished until they hold the sky.
One watchmaker, one watch
A single artisan assembles each piece from first pivot to final seal, and signs the movement where only a loupe will find it.
Heritage
Four generations, one bench
A workshop above the tide tables
Élodie Vesper, daughter of a lighthouse keeper, opens a two-bench atelier and begins regulating marine chronometers for the fishing fleet.
The first Marée
The house issues its first brass alarm timepiece with a tidal complication — dawn and dusk marked in gold along the chapter ring.
The hundred-year promise
Third-generation director Henri Vesper signs the century guarantee, a warranty longer than any human client will need it. It has never been withdrawn.
Eleven a year
Production is deliberately reduced to eleven pieces annually. The waiting list now passes between generations, like the watches.
The collection
Three dials, one tide
The 2026 Marée series follows the day it will keep at your bedside: dawn, dusk, and midnight.
Marée Aube
Dawn dial · cream guillochéCHF 68,000
Marée Crépuscule
Dusk dial · smoked amberCHF 74,000
Marée Minuit
Night dial · blued gold starsCHF 81,000
Acquisition
The list is long. The century is longer.
Enquiries are answered personally by the atelier, in the order they arrive, usually within a fortnight. Patience, as ever, is part of the movement.
Begin an enquiry