Bonniksen Brings the Carrousel Back to Independent Watchmaking

Independent watchmaking has a new name with an old soul.

Bonniksen, founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds by Maximin Chapuis and Jason Chevrolat, is bringing back one of horology’s great overlooked mechanisms: the Carrousel, invented in 1892 by Danish-born watchmaker Bahne Bonniksen in Coventry, England.

For collectors who know it, the Carrousel has always sat in the shadow of the tourbillon, not because it lacked mechanical intrigue, but because history was rarely kind to it.

At a glance

A forgotten rival to the tourbillon returns

The Carrousel was conceived as a chronometric solution in the same broad philosophical territory as the tourbillon, using motion to counter positional errors in a watch’s regulating organ.

Unlike the tourbillon, however, it faded from wider watchmaking memory after the decline of the British horological trade and the upheavals that followed in the 20th century.

Bahne Bonniksen’s name remained familiar mostly to pocket watch specialists, despite the fact that his invention once stood as a serious technical answer to one of precision watchmaking’s central problems.

Chapuis began studying the mechanism after finding that even in Switzerland, clear explanations of its operation were difficult to come by.

His research led him to a 1903 drawing by Bonniksen for a fully pivoted Carrousel that was never produced during the inventor’s lifetime.

That unfinished historical thread now gives the new brand its most compelling reason to exist.

Naissance d’une Montre 4 becomes a brand launch

The project sits under Naissance d’une Montre 4, part of the Time Æon Foundation’s continuing effort to preserve traditional horological craft.

The foundation has long been associated with some of contemporary watchmaking’s most respected figures, including Greubel Forsey, Philippe Dufour and Vianney Halter.

This chapter is notable because it’s not simply another watch in the Naissance d’une Montre sequence.

It is also the beginning of Bonniksen as a workshop and a standalone marque.

Greubel Forsey’s role as supporter gives the project a natural link to the highest end of modern hand watchmaking, particularly where fabrication, finishing and knowledge transmission are concerned.

The ambition is not to create a conventional high-end watch with decorative hand-finishing added at the end.

Bonniksen is being framed around genuine handmade watchmaking, closer in spirit to pieces such as Greubel Forsey’s Hand Made One and Hand Made Two.

The first Bonniksen watch

The debut watch is planned as a compact, wearable expression of a mechanism born in the pocket watch age.

It will feature a hand-crafted Carrousel in a wristwatch format under 40mm, a scale that wasn’t attempted in Bahne Bonniksen’s own era.

Two domed crystals will open the watch from both sides, revealing a three-hand inverted calibre rather than hiding the architecture beneath a closed back.

An unusual three-quarter plate gives the movement a more assertive mechanical presence, while the finishing language is firmly contemporary haute horlogerie.

Confirmed details include screwed chatons, a mainspring barrel boss, six-spoke wheels, hand-polished chamfers and black polishing across numerous components.

The first watch will be a unique piece in steel and is intended for auction.

Ten additional examples are planned after that, giving the project a deliberately narrow opening chapter rather than a broad commercial rollout.

Details & Specifications

An old name with a modern independent spirit

The founders have also made a point of approaching the Bonniksen name with restraint.

Rather than treating it as a dormant label to be revived for convenience, they first made contact with Bahne Bonniksen’s descendants, since the family had long since left watchmaking behind.

That detail matters in a corner of the industry where heritage can too easily become branding shorthand.

Here, the attraction is more specific: a forgotten invention, an unrealised drawing, and a technical identity that gives the brand a purpose from day one.

Chevrolat’s background brings a different kind of energy to the venture, shaped by elite downhill mountain biking, engineering studies, management training and a family line of blacksmiths.

Chapuis brings the watchmaker’s obsession with mechanism, history and hand production.

Together, they’re funding the company independently, a choice that fits the tone of a project built around patience rather than scale.

For collectors, the appeal won’t be only that the Carrousel is rare.

It’s that Bonniksen is trying to make rarity intellectually useful again, by returning a genuine alternative path in precision watchmaking to the wrist.

If the finished watch delivers on its promise, it won’t just put an old name back on a dial; it may give the Carrousel the serious modern audience it has been missing for more than a century.