Abraham Favre, the founder of Favre Leuba Watch company, originally began his watchmaking apprenticeship in 1718 and set up his company in 1735 making it one of the oldest watch companies in the entire history of Haute Horlogerie. The manufacturer sits just behind Blancpain which was established just two years before. The Le Locle-based watchmaker shared a unique passion handed down by his father. Determined to improve timekeeping technology, he partnered with Auguste Leuba in 1815, forming the Favre Leuba company and establishing itself globally throughout the 20th Century. In order to branch out across the European market, both co founders travelled together, showing the world their sophisticated pocket watches. It was not until the sixth generation of Favres within the watchmaking business began growing the company name in Asia, that Favre Leuba moved its facilities from Le Locle to Geneva in 1896.
Over the years, Favre Leuba has created some memorable and highly sought after timepieces that share a common factor. An in-house developed movement. Watches like the Sea Chief, Sea King and Sea Raider were powered by the FL101 Calibre. The Sea Chief watch boasted a clean design characterised by tall, elongated indexes that assisted the wearer with easy and quick timekeeping. The Sea King combined a sports watch aesthetic with remarkable water resistant capability, enabling the wearer to explore underwater environments or partake in water sports whilst keeping accurate time. The Favre Leuba Sea Raider was characterized by its retro inspired aesthetic.
Extending on the success of its Sea King design, Favre Leuba began specialising in diving watches from 1960, marking this pivotal chapter in its history with the Water Deep model. Following on from this was the Bivouac model. It was the watch of choice for parachute flyers in the US’ Swiss national parachuting team during the 1962 World Cup. The Bivouac was the first to house an aneroid barometer for altimeter and air pressure readings.
Favre Leuba also developed the Calibre FL251, which featured two barrels and an extra flat design to sit inside the 200 meter water resistant Deep Blue watch and the 1968 Bathy, which displayed both dive time and dive depth simultaneously. Before the Favre family sold the company, it had success with the 1980s Sea Sky and Sea Sky GMT models. Now owned by the Tata Group in Zug, Favre Leuba resurfaced in 2011. This period of the brand’s story is landmarked with releases like the Raider Harpoon and the altitude friendly Bivouac 9000. The latter was worn to the summit of Mt Everest, while the Raider Bathy 120 MemoDepth was released in celebration of the brand’s 280th anniversary. Having weathered many storms and accompanied the wrists of some of the world’s most daring explorers and mountaineers, the story of Favre Leuba watches is one of courage, inspiration and perseverance.
