On the west coast of Fyn, one of Denmark’s largest islands, sea views are the norm — unlike in Switzerland, where “it’s just mountains and lakes everywhere,” said Hannelore Lass, a watchmaker and engraver, who moved here from Switzerland with her family in 2018.
While Ms. Lass; her husband, Christian, a watchmaker who grew up in Copenhagen; and their two young sons may have left the Swiss landscape behind, watchmaking has followed them: Life on this 1,200-square-mile island of about 500,000 residents has allowed them to live and to build their independent watch brand, Christian Lass, in what they describe as an affordable and spacious environment.
It also has put their considerable watchmaking expertise to the test, far from the comforting, familiar hum of the Swiss industry, where Ms. Lass was an engraver at the workshop of Olivier Vaucher, an engraving specialist, for eight years, and Mr. Lass was the master watchmaker at the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva for almost a decade.
The couple met in 2006 while working for the independent watchmaker Vianney Halter, where Ms. Lass was an in-house engraver and Mr. Lass, a watchmaker. He holds a watchmaking degree from Den Danske Urmagerskole in Copenhagen, which included an apprenticeship at the Danish atelier Soren Andersen, where he maintained some of the Danish royal family’s timepieces.
“In my opinion, it was a good thing they left Switzerland to develop their talent,” Mr. Halter wrote in an email. “You don’t have to be in Switzerland to make watches, especially now that we are all connected. Being far from Switzerland can even be an advantage, with quiet surroundings while working at the bench.”
Operational Changes
In 2020 the Lasses released their brand’s first and, so far, only model, the 30CP. But the quick sellout of the 50-piece limited edition required some operational changes: A year ago, they moved their workshop out of the family home and into a factory that had been producing equipment for laser machines.
A dilapidated property overrun with blackberry bushes when the couple first saw it, the newly renovated 375-square-meter (4,035-square-foot) one-story building in the village of Haarby is a 20-minute walk from their home. (Their home itself is a renovated village schoolhouse, where Mr. Lass built watches in a former classroom and Ms. Lass did her engraving work in a restored outhouse.)
“It was fine at first when I was alone,” Mr. Lass said of working at home, “but as soon as we got someone in to help us, it was physically hard to be there. It was very cramped.”
The new location, which Mr. Lass said they purchased in 2022 for about $50,000, has provided enough space for their second watchmaker and an apprentice. They all have been working on orders for the 30CP, a 38-millimeter time-only watch with a click case (the term for a case that snaps open and closed, rather than the common screw arrangement) offered in 18-karat white, rose or yellow gold at 50,000 Swiss francs ($59,198).
Watch sites such as Hodinkee and SJX praised the 30CP for the movement’s unconventional design: Mr. Lass repositioned the balance bridge, which holds parts in place, and included a time keeping accuracy-regulating mechanism resting on a ruby ball, a system he said was inspired by the ones that Abraham-Louis Breguet used in marine chronometers in the 1800s.
Mr. Lass said the 30CP reflected his desire for balance and harmony in watch design as well as his love of classical watchmaking, especially from brands such as Patek Philippe and Jaeger-LeCoultre and independents such as Philippe Dufour.
“It is a classical yet innovative watch,” Martin Kalland, a co-founder of the Finnish company Jurmo Watches, said, adding that he was not aware of anyone else using the Breguet-inspired mechanism in a wristwatch.
He added that Mr. Lass’s “experience working in the Patek museum has for sure had an impact on how he looks at the design and aesthetics of watches and movements.”
The Lasses said they have been planning the design of the brand’s next timepiece, and while they would not elaborate, they did say it would include a complication.
They intend to execute their plans in the new workshop, where the machines and equipment used to manufacture parts — the brand makes everything by hand except crystals and bracelets and straps — fit neatly alongside a recently purchased 1950s lathe that Mr. Lass said eventually would make dials. (They said that the machine, which has a 2,000-page manual, had been used to create Dutch currency.)
“It’s just really nice now, that everything is set up and everything can have its place,” Mr. Lass said. “You don’t have to move something in order to do something else.”
“Also,” Ms. Lass said, “when you go home, you go home. You don’t think, ‘Oh I’ll just run back quickly to my studio and do this or that.’”
They also intend to create a recreation room at the workshop for their sons, now 7 and 10 years old, “maybe with table tennis; somewhere they can just spend time and bring a friend,” she said.
A Spacious Studio
Ms. Lass also benefited from the move: In spring she had settled into a more spacious studio in the new workshop, where she has been engraving bridges and dials using the hand-push technique (a type of engraving done with traditional tools and a microscope); beveling edges; and preparing cases for polishing.
While confidentially agreements prevented her from sharing details about most of the projects she did at Vaucher, Ms. Lass said she had been part of an in-house engraving team, doing similar work for the brand and for client brands that manufactured some of the world’s most exclusive — and expensive — timepieces.
“She is very competent in her work, with experience that has brought her to a very high level of know-how,” Mr. Halter, her former employer, wrote. “She also enjoys her work and this is reflected in the results.”
At Vaucher, for example, she created dials for the acclaimed Knights of the Round Table watch series by Roger Dubuis, first introduced in 2013. Each dial featured 12 minuscule knights whose one cubic-millimeter heads included detailed facial features such as eyebrows and beards.
It could take as long as to two days before a knight was dial-ready, said Ms. Lass, who grew up in Frankfurt, holds a master’s degree in hand engraving from the Zeichenakademie in Hanau, Germany, and started her watchmaking career at the Sinn Spezialuhren brand in Frankfurt. “They had different armor, different haircuts and different beards.
“It was a series of 28 watches,” she said. “Even if we were eight engravers, it took a long time.”
To freshen her skills during the height of the pandemic, she crafted a similarly sized figure of one of her new homeland’s most famous men: Hans Christian Andersen. “At least with the knights, it just had to look like a knight, not like someone in particular,” she said, “so I was wondering, ‘Can I do this but with someone recognizable?’”
She eventually settled on the Danish literary legend “because he is someone people would recognize,” she said, but also “because we now live in Denmark.”
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