ALAIN SILBERSTEIN

ALAIN SILBERSTEIN: THE MUSINGS OF A LIFELONG VISIONARY

If the most expert Japanese collectors or Singaporean aficionados know of Besançon, it’s without doubt the ‘fault’ of Alain Silberstein. And yet the watchmaker and maverick is far too independent to become the spokesperson for a region in which he shone but with which he has never been naturally associated for his own watchmaking work.today, Alain Silberstein has put his brand on hold, but in the eyes of any watch connoisseur, he remains one of the founders of the “new watchmaking”.It’s a term that didn’t even exist in 1987 when he presented his works in Basel for the first time. What a shock that was!An aesthetic shock, with the appearance of a never-before-seen design with thick, round watches, the use of primary colours – red, blue, yellow – forbidden by all the other watchmakers, and a technical shock, with the introduction of tourbillons that at the time were reserved for a few hyper-traditional brands.The “watchmaking architect”, as he describes himself, has shaken up the sleepy world of watchmaking and opened the way for all manner of experimentation, proving that it is possible to adapt mechanical watches, which had become technically obsolete, to cutting-edge modernity.