Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. New Indie Atelier Pieters Introduces Its Inaugural Watch, the Atelier 1 Founders’ Series
Indie watchmaking couple Maarten and Jessica Pieters release their first watch, a highly decorated piece with tourbillon and dual display planetary power reserve.
There’s a new indie watch brand on the scene. It seems that we’re telling this story every week. Sometimes, or should I say rather often, these new ventures are coming with pretty fascinating inaugural watches. So is the case of Atelier Pieters, a company founded by couple Maarten and Jessica Pieters. Two watchmakers, one workshop, two complementary expertises, resulting in a watch, the Atelier 1 Founders’ Series, with substance, complexity and a sense of movement decoration and design that is worth a closer look.
The couple behind Atelier Pieters
In recent years, many of the new indie watch brands we’ve covered, such as Aubert & Ramel, Hazemann & Monnin or Atelier Bernard, were created by young watchmakers fresh out of training. With Atelier Pieters, things are different, and the duo behind this new brand has experience, to say the least. Maarten Pieters, a Dutch native, moved to Switzerland in the mid-1990s, where he participated in some exceptional projects: prototyping timepieces at THA and Janvier SA, contributing to the modern production of the Breguet Sympathiques, and leading the complications department at Omega, where he participated in the development and chronometer certification of the Omega Central Tourbillon. For the following fifteen years, Maarten served as Director of WOSTEP, a renowned independent training centre supported by members of the Swiss watch industry.
Jessica Pieters, originally from Australia, graduated from WOSTEP and later became an instructor and Manager of the WOSTEP Worldwide Partnership. She has spent her career refining practical watchmaking skills and transmitting them. She is specialised in finishing and decoration. And after years of training others, sharing their knowledge, it is time now for Maarten and Jessica Pieters to fly on their own with the Atelier 1 Founders’ Series.
Atelier Pieters’ inaugural watch
The couple’s first watch, named Atelier 1 Founders’ Series, is fairly classic at first sight. It certainly isn’t the most striking watch we’ve seen in recent years and remains rather conservative, at least in terms of design. The watch starts with a polished 3-piece platinum case measuring 43.50mm in diameter and 13mm in thickness – fairly large, especially considering the current trend for reduced diameters – but it needs to house a substantial movement. Framed by sapphire crystals on both sides, it is 30m water-resistant and worn on a 20mm handstitched ostrich foot leather strap closed by a platinum pin buckle.
The Atelier 1 Founders’ Series is released in two different, should I say opposite, tastes. The first one, named “Jour” (day in French), brings a warm rose gold dial with blue accents, a classic of indie watchmaking that always works – salmon with white metal is a no-brainer. The other edition is named “Minuit” (midnight in French) and, as you can guess from the name, has a darker attitude. The dial has a monochromatic approach with an anthracite base and silver accents.
On both editions, the dial is composed of several parts and layers, starting with a thin and smooth minute track, framing a fluted hour chapter ring with applied, facetted hour markers at cardinal points. The centre of the dial has an intricate texture that is made by using the brand’s logo as a repetitive pattern. The hands for hours and minutes are milled and diamond facetted, with an elegant openworked profile, while the small seconds counter, framed by an arched plaque with “tourbillon – power reserve” sits low on the dial – proof that the movement has been created from scratch to be housed in a large case.
The in-house movement
Most of the value of the Atelier Pieters Atelier 1 Founders’ Series will be found on the back side. At the heart of this new creation is the calibre T2-03RM, a large hand-wound movement conceived by the duo. From raw material to finished components, the majority of Atelier 1 movement components are produced within the Pieters’ modest atelier using only manually operated conventional machines. This 36mm movement combines classic codes of indie watchmaking for the finishing with impressive technical solutions.
Regulated by a one-minute tourbillon, the latter rises from the mainplate, with its own black polished transversal bridge. It features a variable inertia balance wheel with 8 regulating screws, a free sprung Breguet overcoil balance spring and an anti-magnetic pallet fork and escape wheel in Nickel-Phosphorous – a satisfying combination of traditional solutions and advanced, modern techniques. A nice touch, as the beating heart revolves, it carries with it an “8” on the cage signifying the strictly limited series of eight pieces expressed in each colourway. The other notable feature is the dual display planetary power reserve, which occupies most of the upper space on the movement side. The remaining power is displayed precisely on the back of the movement thanks to an arched gauge, and more discreetly on the dial side with a small round aperture at 3 o’clock. A simple indication made in a complex and appealing way…
The finishing of the movement appears to be rather impressive. The mainplate and bridges are decorated with a grainage technique, formed through thousands of strikes of tiny, hardened steel bristles – resulting in “a pattern of minuscule indentations that creates a seemingly living surface that not only dances with the light but forms a hardened and protective layer to the native German silver mainplates and bridges.” The matte surface is enhanced by hand-applied bevelling that reveals the layered construction of the movement. All moving steel parts are then mirror-polished to contrast with the rest of the movement and its warm colour.
Availability & Price
The Atelier Pieters Atelier 1 Founders’ Series will be produced in a limited run of only 8 pieces per colourway, available directly from Atelier Pieters in Les Hauts-Geneveys, Switzerland (somewhere between Neuchâtel and La Chaux-de-Fonds). The watch, regardless of the colour scheme, is priced at CHF 148,500 excl. VAT.
The Atelier 1 being manually crafted and finished piece by piece, deliveries will take time. Atelier Pieters’ production capacity is limited to approximately 4 pieces a year, with the first example set to be finished in November 2026, and each timepiece is expected to be completed in a rhythm of approximately every three months. For more details and allocations, please contact [email protected] or visit atelierpieters.ch.
