Today in the attic of his home on the placid shores of the Lac de Joux, Daniel Roth quietly toils away on the crowning cap of a career spanning over five decades long. It is a two-minute rotating tourbillon, a subset of the complication with an unhurried pace, beauty and intricacy that seem felicitous in exemplifying his ethos as an independent watchmaker. Hunched over a workbench with his head buried in the work of his hands, the image is a stock portrayal, something of a cliché but one that took a long trek through trials and triumphs to reach.
Now 76 years old, Roth, like many of his peers, started out as an employee of a luxury watch brand before finding his feet as an independent watchmaker. The difference, however, is that he did it twice over, dispelling the fantasy that the road is clean-cut for every great watchmaker. Alongside Franck Muller, Roger Dubuis and Philippe Dufour, Roth belonged to the generation of watchmakers who came of age during the Quartz Crisis. The precursory role he played in sustaining the craft of watchmaking would parallel the labors of those who maintained the commercial viability of the mechanical watch years later. Particularly, he played an important role in the rebirth of one of horology’s greatest names — Breguet — and by extension, established the archetype of the complicated dress watch. Over the course of 14 years at the brand, he created an artistic vocabulary that united modern Breguet wristwatches with the monumental work of history’s finest watchmaker. And evidently in what follows, the path he established for Breguet was also one that would guide him all his life.
While Roth was born in Nice, on the French Riviera in 1946, his family is of Swiss origins. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather had been watchmakers in Neuchâtel before his grandfather traded the snowy slopes of the Jura mountains for the silky sands of the Mediterranean coast, moving the family to
