ULYSSE NARDIN

A watch maison whose very name conjures up romantic images of seagoing adventure and oceanic exploration, Ulysse Nardin, founded in 1846 by its eponym, carved out its place in Swiss watch history as a revered maker of marine chronometers for many of the world’s navies in the 19th and 20th centuries. Long regarded as the “standard bearer of nautical timekeeping,” Ulysse Nardin also entered the 21st Century as one of the most technically innovative and boldly experimental watchmakers on the scene. In 2001, Ulysse Nardin shook up the watch world with its introduction of the Freak, a wildly unconventional timepiece with a “flying carrousel system” in which there are no hands, only a baguette-shaped movement rotating on its own axis, with a bridge to indicate the minutes, while a rotating disk mounted on the mainplate indicates the hours. The Freak was also one of the first watches to use silicon for several of its vital movement parts, a material now widely used in the industry. The brand’s maritime history lives on in collections like the Diver, whose many models include special editions devoted to preserving endangered marine wildlife, and the recently launched Marine Torpilleur family, named for a type of historical torpedo boat and designed to echo the look of classical marine chronometers, with Roman numerals, cathedral hands, and a stacked arrangement of subdials. At the pinnacle of haute horlogerie and trumpeting the company’s most avant-garde design are more highly complicated models like the Blast Hourstriker and Blast Moonstruck.

Founded: 1846

Headquarters: Le Locle, Switzerland

Ownership: Sowind Group

Notable models: Marine, Diver, Freak, Classico

Did you know: Ulysse Nardin won a competition organized by the Washington Naval Observatory in 1905 to become an official supplier of watches to the U.S. Navy for several years.