It’s rare for me to encounter a watch that challenges my reference points; I’ve recorded video surveys of over 10,000 watches and handled thousands more.
While I’ve seen models with long power reserves, huge power reserves, and absurd power reserves, the result always looked as outwardly awkward as it was technically adept. Capability came at a cost.
Put simply, every watch I’ve encountered with a power reserve beyond ten days was massive.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1 on the author’s wrist
But Honoris 1, the inaugural product of debutant marque Haute-Rive, is a compact marvel of packaging through clever design. Its 1,000-hour power reserve lies within the unremarkable confines of a 42.5mm diameter and 12.4mm thickness.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1
Add a flying tourbillon, and it becomes clear that this is a point of reference for the entire industry – something that will be recalled for years as a watershed moment for modern watchmaking.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1
Haute-Rive arrived in 2022 as the brainchild of micromechanical engineer and horologist Stéphane von Gunten. Part traditional watchmaker and part scientist, his background includes research and development roles at semiconductor firms, university laboratories, and finally watch-oriented development capacities with Patek Philippe and Ulysse Nardin.
With UN, von Gunten collaborated with silicon affiliate SIGATEC on projects involving compliant mechanisms, alternative escapements, and high-frequency oscillators – many in the flagship Freak line of watches.
As of 2023, Haute-Rive has been focused on delivering the Honoris 1, a model available in rose, yellow, or white gold.
Initially, ten examples of the hand-made Honoris 1 will be delivered annually.
And that’s roughly where this discussion goes off the rails, because nearly every other fact about this watch stands alone in the industry.
Large diameter 1,000-hour power reserve indicator on the back of the Haute-Rive Honoris 1
For one thing, there’s that 1,000-hour power reserve. This deserves a quick review of watches with 30 or more days (720 hours) of power reserve. A. Lange & Söhne debuted its “Lange 31” in 2007 and brought it to market a year later as a 45.9mm monster that required a ratcheting key to wind.
Hublot’s 2013 “Masterpiece MP05 La Ferrari Tourbillon” raised the stakes to 50 days of power reserve via 11 mainspring barrels; it required a power tool to wind.
Vacheron Constantin’s 2019 “Traditionnelle Twin Beat Perpetual Calendar” raised the stakes with 65 days of power reserve – and a few major qualifiers. Vacheron’s watch required no tool to wind nor huge case to house.
But the Twin Beat was, in fact, a 96-hour/5Hz watch with a secondary, 1.2Hz escapement that, when activated, could maintain the watch’s operation for 65 days only when perfectly still; it could not run for 65 days on the wrist.
In correspondence, von Gunten explained Haute-Rive’s specific claims regarding the 1,000-hour power reserve. First, it’s a real 1K and designed to operate as such on the wrist. Second, the “chronometric” power reserve, or the mainspring scope within which the watch best keeps time, is roughly 30 days.
Single-mainspring watches with 120-hour+ power reserves have bad reputations as timekeepers. But using multiple mainspring barrels would have resulted in a watch that duplicated the bulk and complexity of existing long-reserve options. Something had to give.
For von Gunten to attain regular timekeeping with only a single three-meter mainspring – no “racing” at full wind nor “lagging” on the downslope – it was necessary to front-load the isochronic running into the initial three-quarters of the power reserve.
His best effort to produce a long-autonomy watch without peaks and troughs yields one month of ideal timekeeping and 11.6 days of what’s best described as an emergency reserve.
Solution: wind it once a month.
About that winding: it’s accomplished with the subtly serrated bezel. As a result of a relatively high gear ratio, winding the Honoris 1 doesn’t take appreciably longer than many watches with only three to five days of energy.
Due to this ease and speed of winding, the inventor confirmed that his watch is equipped with a bridle-style mainspring like that of an automatic.
At the limit of mainspring tension, the spring slips, so impatient or inattentive winding can’t crash through a tension limit and damage the watch.
Large diameter 1,000-hour power reserve indicator on the back of the Haute-Rive Honoris 1
Virtually the entire backside of the case is encircled by an orbital power reserve indicator. A large inboard wheel drives the ring gear which displays remaining hours of réserve de marche.
Even on this less theatrical reverse flank, the Honoris features satin brushing on the reserve scale and small applied text plates, bevels on the edges of the plates, and polished screws with beveled slots.
The large wheel driving the power reserve indicator is beautifully beveled to sharp creased points within its recesses.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1 schematic
The power reserve indicator’s driving wheel is energized by a pinion at center on the axis of the barrel arbor – which sits at dead center of the watch. That reveals the single greatest engineering distinction between the Honoris 1 and other long-reserve watches; the entire inner volume of this machine consists of one giant mainspring barrel.
As with the Ulysse Nardin Freak and basically nothing else, the Honoris 1 devotes its interior to a mammoth mainspring and places the entire train and escapement above.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1 mainspring barrel side-on schematic
Not only is the movement’s full 38.45mm diameter devoted to its energy source, but the thickness of the entire watch is kept manageable by employing the baseplate of the movement – visible under the caseback – as the lower lid of the mainspring barrel.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1
Returning to the obverse, a conventional crown at three o’clock is married to an unconventional setting system. A trigger above the crown engages an exposed column wheel, and that extends the crown wheel on a telescoping dial-side drive shaft.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1 schematic
A coil spring provides the tension to extend and keep the crown wheel in contact while setting. To indicate the watch is in setting mode, a yellow index appears in a window above the column wheel; retracting the setting system returns the window to a black display.
In my experience, setting and winding mechanisms generally are the first place that under-developed or crudely handmade cottage brands betray their lack of resources. To the credit of this watchmaker, there’s nothing rough, irregular, or idiosyncratic about the operation of Haute-Rive’s setting system.
I’ve experienced less novel designs produced in similar quantities to the Honoris 1 that exhibited all of these flaws. That something with a serial number of “1” could feel so finished should be reassuring to those considering a purchase of this model.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1
While the keyless works of the watch is unconventional, the motion works bearing the hands is more routine. That is, if you can get past the four-post elevated bridge on which the hands are mounted. To clear the huge mainspring barrel below, von Gunten elevates his hour and minute hands to provide an unimpeded path for the drivetrain underneath.
Drive to the hands and drive to the tourbillon pass through the same dial real estate but on different planes. A downwardly angled bevel gear transmits drive from the plane of the central bridge to the plane of the tourbillon below the dial.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1
The north-south axis of the Honoris 1 dial is a busy one. At twelve o’clock, an enormous “Wheel of Time” drives the train of the watch while acting as a capstone to the winding mechanism. The toothed underside of the winding bezel drives a visible set of intermediate wheels which spur an upper wheel connected to the planet gears of an underlying epicyclic gearset.
Not only does this arrangement provide mechanical advantage for winding, but it ensures that torque to the drivetrain remains consistent even when the watch is being wound.
Flying tourbillon (left) of the Haute Rive Honoris 1
At six o’clock, the flying tourbillon, by definition, has no upper bridge to block the owner’s view. While von Gunten’s choice of a flat hairspring is surprising, the no-compromise six-position adjustment and free-sprung balance likely provide the same benefits as an overcoil.
This is a standard one-minute tourbillon regulator and hits several aesthetic high notes with excellent depth, handsome layout, a pleasingly gentle 18,000 VpH oscillation rate, and superb interior angle bevels within its hollowed confines.
Abundant hand polished anlage on the Haute-Rive Honoris 1
About those creased interior bevels; they’re everywhere on this dial. Haute-Rive provides dozens of them on the tourbillon carriage alone, and the dial’s center bridge boasts still more. The upper dial’s “Wheel of Time” is one of the most densely interior-beveled works of anglage I’ve ever encountered.
Given how highly the modern Instagram-primed watch community values this type of decoration, its use in overwhelming quantities is astounding by itself. The feat becomes more impressive given how many of these bevels and angles exist inside the confines of tightly spaced gaps within tiny components.
As much as any engineered complexity, exhaustive attention to aesthetic details helps to explain why annual production is projected at less than a dozen watches.
That’s not to say the Honoris 1 is perfect. Absurd levels of magnification reveal that some of the lovely interior bevels are a bit uneven. Since most brands wouldn’t even attempt such a profusion of intricate executions, and the overall effect is fantastic, I can let this slide.
Also, under unreasonable magnification, there was evidence of hard tool contact on the top of the tourbillon near the center pivot. Early F.P. Journe watches also exhibit a fair amount of mechanical hard contact upon scrutiny, so this sort of blemish generally is indicative of a new shop struggling to manage the challenges of pilot production.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1 on a small wrist
The only flaw I’d describe as obvious regards the black grand feu enamel of the dial. I applaud Haute-Rive for going bold with a hollowed 18-karat white gold champlevé dial filled and fired with vitreous enamel. Black lacquer on brass would have been easy, cheap, and reliably flawless.
Black enamel, on the other hand, betrays every flaw. There is some spotting on the dial that indicates contamination somewhere in the production and assembly process. Fired enamel often has a rippled “orange-peel” surfacing, but this wasn’t that. I repeatedly cleaned the crystal but discovered many dust-like signatures were on the dial itself.
Areas where the enamel meets the visible borders of the white gold dial base also reveal some gaps and non-adhesion between the two surfaces, but this flaw requires magnification to detect.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1 on a small wrist
That said, the Honoris 1 is a command performance. It’s beautiful to look at, technically audacious, ground-breaking, wearable on a normal wrist, and exhaustively decorated in ways that are relevant to today’s most discriminating collectors.
Haute-Rive Honoris 1
Signs of a young company are in evidence, but no more than Lamborghini’s revolutionary 1966 Miura evinced the 36-month-old company behind it. Today, a collector would trade a kidney just to have a Miura on static display in his living room.
Breakthrough products by new voices deserve both reverence and some space to round into form. Haute-Rive has set a marker for the entire industry.
For more information, please visit https://haute-rive-watches.ch/en/honoris-1-en/
Quick Facts: Haute-Rive Honoris 1
Functions: Hours; minutes; 60-second flying tourbillon; power reserve indicator
Case: White gold; 42.5mm diameter; 12.4mm thick; 50.4 lug-to-lug; 22mm lug spacing; winding by bezel; setting by crown; 30 meters of water resistance
Strap: Black alligator leather strap
Clasp: White gold pin buckle
Dial: Gold base, champlevé with black grand feu enamel
Movement: H01; manual wind; 1,000-hour power reserve (720 hours chronometric); 2.5Hz; free-sprung balance; 1-minute flying tourbillon; 35 jewels; 38.45mm; pusher with column wheel engages setting of time by telescoping pinion and coil spring; slipping bridle mainspring to prevent over-winding
Price: $165,000
* Tim Mosso is the media director and watch specialist at The 1916 Company. You can check out their very comprehensive YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@the1916company.
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