Historic Bonniksen Brand Brought Back To Life As Independent Watchmaking House

There are moments in watchmaking when the past doesn’t merely inspire the present — it reclaims it. Naissance d’une Montre 4 – Le Carrousel is one of those moments.

Conceived under the exacting stewardship of the Time Æon Foundation, with the discreet but decisive support of Greubel Forsey, this fourth chapter does more than continue a legacy. It announces the arrival of something altogether rarer, a new independent manufacture, Bonniksen, founded in 2026 in La Chaux-de-Fonds by Maximin Chapuis and Jason Chevrolat.

For those who follow the deeper currents of horology, the name resonates. Bonniksen is not a revival in the marketing sense, it is a restoration of intent. A return to a time when precision was pursued with almost obsessive purity, and when innovation served chronometry above all else.

The Time Æon Foundation has spent nearly two decades safeguarding something far more fragile than objects, knowledge. Not the kind that can be digitised or industrialised, but the kind that lives in the hand, in the eye, in the patience of a craftsman.

Its Naissance d’une Montre programme has become a proving ground for this philosophy. From the hand-made tourbillon of 2012 to the chain-and-fusée wristwatch completed in 2025, each instalment has demonstrated that the rigour of 19th-century watchmaking is not lost, merely waiting for those willing to pursue it. With Naissance d’une Montre 4, that pursuit takes on a new dimension: independence.

Bonniksen is a name reborn with purpose

Chapuis and Chevrolat are not simply launching a brand, they are establishing a position.

Their premise is disarmingly simple, yet almost impossibly demanding: every component conceived, made and finished according to the highest traditions of hand-crafted horology. No shortcuts. No compromise.

At the heart of their first creation lies a mechanism long absent from the modern conversation: the Carrousel.

Not revisited lightly, but re-engineered after more than 5,500 hours of historical and technical research and crucially, with the involvement of Bahne Bonniksen’s descendants. This is not reinterpretation for effect; it is reconstruction with intent.

The Carrousel is the connoisseur’s complication

If the tourbillon has become the emblem of high watchmaking, the Carrousel remains its more elusive counterpart, quieter, rarer, and arguably more intellectually compelling.

Invented in 1892 by Bahne Bonniksen, it was designed to solve the same fundamental problem: positional error caused by gravity. But its solution is entirely its own.

Where the tourbillon fixes part of its mechanism to the main plate, the Carrousel is liberated, a fully carried system, driven independently, with no fixed wheel. The result is a mechanism of remarkable stability and resilience, as elegant in theory as it is complex in execution.

Its visual signature is equally captivating: a rotating cage, completing its revolution with measured authority, averaging errors while offering a hypnotic display of mechanical choreography.

For decades, it disappeared from relevance. Not because it lacked merit, but because it demanded too much, until now.

The watch is restraint, reimagined

Bonniksen’s debut is deliberately measured. A wristwatch under 40 mm, entirely hand-made, housing the first Carrousel of its kind in this format.

The architecture is classical, yet subtly subversive. A three-quarter plate anchors the movement, while the time display is lifted to twelve o’clock, off-centred, restrained, unmistakably English in spirit. Pear-shaped hands trace the hours and minutes, while a large central seconds hand asserts itself with scientific clarity.

Then, the revelation, an aperture, slightly off-axis, through which the Carrousel rotates, one full revolution every 30 seconds. Opposing it, the seconds hand completes its own cycle in 60. Two rhythms, interwoven, constantly shifting, a mechanical dialogue that is as precise as it is poetic.

The details read like a manifesto: screwed chatons, black polish, six-spoke wheels, a maker’s mark. Not decorative indulgences, but signals that this is watchmaking pursued at its most uncompromising level.

Naissance d’une Montre 4 – Le Carrousel is not simply a watch. It is a statement of intent. It marks the re-emergence of a forgotten complication, the birth of a new independent house, and the continuation of a mission that values transmission over production, mastery over scale.

In an era increasingly defined by speed, Bonniksen chooses deliberation, and in doing so, reminds us that true innovation in watchmaking rarely shouts. It turns slowly, precisely and waits to be understood.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Maximin when he appeared on the Talking About Watches With MrWatchMaster podcast when he talked about the build up to this exciting new brand launch.

For more information please visit Bonniksen