COVER STORY
Above, from left: RS 14 Rouge, enameller Sophie Cattin and RS 14.
to their land and village, to the artisanal way of life,” explains Alexis Sarkissian, whose company Totally Worth It distributes the brand in North America.
“ Their bond with the region and the local craftsmen and women is evident in everything they do, from the name Rudis Sylva to the partnership with the engravers, enameller, guilloché artiste, angleur, and watchmaker. All are situated at a stone thrown from Rudis Sylva’ s own very traditional offices in Les Bois.”
That bond with local craftsmen and craftswomen seems quite evident when one admires the workmanship of Rudis Sylva timepieces. Epitaux has made sure that the brand’ s aesthetics match the high level of technical watchmaking seen in the Harmonious Oscillator.
As a result, the movement itself boasts polished and beveled angles on steel and titanium components above the main plate, where firm’ s guilloché craftsman, Georges Brodbeck, manually carves designs using a series of rotational( rose engine) and straight line( linear engraver) machining. Another result is an
interesting tapered pyramid pattern exclusive to Rudis Sylva. This hand beveling can be seen best as one examines the work done on both the inward and outward corners of the bridges, which Rudis Sylva explains( correctly) that no machine can reproduce with such superior results. The very visible cage bridge of the oscillator, made from titanium, is not only complicated to make, it’ s equally difficult to polish thoroughly. Yet here fully twenty-eight closed angles can be seen and admired. But every surface – whether visible or not – is decorated to high levels.
Local artist Sophie Cattin contributes enamelwork to Rudis Sylva. She grew up on the Les Rosées-Dessous farm that houses a sundial that dates to1750. She now creates an enameled image of that sundial on the back of every Rudis Sylva watch. For each engraving, she crushes silica stones by hand, mixes them in water and applies the resulting paint to the already hand-engraved surfaces of the caseback. After baking in a kiln at 840 ° Celsius, the enamel is cooled and then polished to obtain a perfect image
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WRISTWATCH | 2017