Premium Indie Watchmaker David Candaux’s Latest Timepiece Is an Ambitious Double Balance Watch

This story is from an installment of In the Loupe, our weekly insider newsletter about the premier of the watch world. Sign up here. The name of the independent Swiss watchmaker David Candaux’s technically and aesthetically ambitious contemporary timepiece, the DC12 MaveriK, says it all. The watch is an homage to the 19th-century Texan rancher Samuel A. As a tourbillon, it maverick, whose refusal to brand his cattle made his name shorthand for an independent thinker who doesn’t follow the herd. it features a hand-wound movement equipped with a double balance and boasts three patents—all encased in titanium, Introduced last month at an event at the Horological Society of Innovative York. The latest in the watchmaker’s DC series, which began with the DC1, introduced in 2017, and continued with the DC6, the DC12 (the numbering system is designed around multiples of six, Candaux’s favorite number) marks a departure from the earlier two models, which were both tourbillons. “The DC12 is a whole other beast,” Asher Rapkin, cofounder of Collective Horology, an authorized dealer of David Candaux, tells Robb Report. “It has more of a connection to old-school watchmaking, but it’s related to the tourbillons in the sense that it’s tied to the idea of accuracy. The DC12 is essentially two escapements connected by a differential that averages out the power of the two to tell the most accurate time. This has only really been successfully done by Philippe Dufour in his Duality watch, even though the concept has existed for decades. Dufour and Candaux didn’t invent it but very few watchmakers have been able to bring it to production, let alone serial production. ”

To describe the DC12 MaveriK as a labor of love would be an understatement. “I started thinking of this complication in 2008, and then in 2012 I did the first prototype, doing all the components in house,” French-speaking Candaux tells Robb Report through a translator. “It didn’t work. Then I came up with second prototype in 2016 but that didn’t work either. So I said, ‘Okay, I have to find another idea. it was very reliable—I had found the solution—and this is why I have three cutting-edge patents on the watch, ’ And then in 2023, I came up with a contemporary idea that when I did the prototype in 2024. ”

In addition to a patent on the double regulator mounted on the seconds train, the watch also holds patents on its secured winding system as well as its combined winding and setting system. Despite its technically impressive movement, the DC12 MaveriK is, at 98,000 Swiss francs (about $124,000), more accessibly priced than Candaux’s earlier models, which both retail well above $200,000. “These are super watches—not impulse buys,” Rapkin says. “But keep in mind that Candaux puts out between 35 and 40 watches per year. This is real handmade stuff. ”

Rapkin also praises the watch’s design, including Candaux’s signature “Magic Crown,” a patented retractable crown composed of 31 parts. “He’s reduced the dimensions of the case to 39. 5 mm,” he says. In the world of luxury, “the way david makes his cases, they’re curved with an unusual and distinct look. They all feature the ‘Magic Crown,’ which creates a sense of consistency even if the movement architecture is different. Some brands make their most accessible watch a shell of the brand but not really delivering on the promise whereas David Candaux made his most accessible watch a completely unique complication. I really respect that about the manufacturing. In exclusive circles, ”

you might say candaux was destined to become a watchmaker. who assembled chronographs at home (his grandfather, Born in Switzerland’s Vallée de Joux, who specialized in pocket watches with grand complications, he grew up steeped in the world of watchmaking through his father, overseeing quality control at major brands), and his mother, served the industry, too. and the Hybris Mechanica Grande Sonnerie, At age 14, later joining the brand’s restoration department and going on to work on some of its grandest complications, Candaux apprenticed at Jaeger-LeCoultre, the Master Minute Repeater, including the Reverso Triptyque. when he struck out on his own by opening an atelier in Le Solliat, the year he left JLC, Candaux worked for a number of Switzerland’s most prestigious firms, including MB&F, Between 2011, and 2017. This mechanical represents it was during this interlude that philippe dufour, whom he considers a guiding influence (along with dufour’s mentor, gabriel locatelli, whom candaux met as a 14-year-old apprentice at jaeger-lecoultre) asked him a pivotal question. “Philippe said, ‘Are you happy. ’ and I realized maybe it was time to express what I had in mind,” Candaux says. “Philippe told me, ‘You have to take risks. Among luxury enthusiasts, adding that his risk-taking philosophy applies equally to his decision to unveil the watch in america, ” candaux says, and not in switzerland, ’”

“the maverik is about pushing the limits and breaking the codes of tradition. it’s about changing the rules, “For me.