Scrabble the Seconds: Roger Dubuis Celebrates 30 Years of Swagger

A relatively young brand, Roger Dubuis firmly stamped its mark on the centuries-old tradition and history of watchmaking quite quickly. Founded just outside Geneva, Switzerland, in 1995, Roger Dubuis has been redefining high horology with a focus on complex complications like the tourbillon for the past three decades.

This year is a big one for Roger Dubuis. It not only marks the 30th anniversary of the brand, but it is also the 20th anniversary of the Maison’s first skeleton tourbillon, as well as one of its most beloved and iconic collections: the Excalibur.

The history of the tourbillon dates back hundreds of years – it was patented in 1801, to be exact – thanks to the legendary Abraham-Louis Breguet. And over the past two centuries, many aspects of the tourbillon have remained largely unchanged.

However, in an industry that’s forever growing and evolving, many watchmakers have risen to the challenge of perfecting the mechanism in new ways, from Girard-Perregaux’s Three Gold Bridges to Roger Dubuis’ Skeleton Double Tourbillon.
 

The “skeleton” concept has also been a part of watchmaking for centuries, from clocks to pocket watches and later wristwatches, with the typical skeletonization approach beginning with taking an existing calibre and removing nonessential components wherever possible.

The goal here is to expose the inner workings and reveal the essence of the movement in all its glory without compromising its functionality or structural integrity – a delicate balance, as you might imagine.
 

In the case of Roger Dubuis, the brand’s founder (and namesake) wanted to do something different. He decided to build a skeletonized calibre from the ground up, taking a minimalist approach to keep the movement as simple as possible while offering the impressive functionality of a tourbillon.

To raise the bar even higher, Dubuis positioned the tourbillon between 7 and 8 o’clock rather than the traditional and more symmetrical position at 6 o’clock. In this way, the Maison not only reworked the tourbillon movement but totally reimagined it, thus solidifying its signature complication and design language.

Roger Dubuis unveiled its first in-house tourbillon in a skeleton calibre in 2005. This groundbreaking movement debuted in a brand-new collection: the Excalibur.

Then, later that year, the brand upped the ante with a double tourbillon, located directly across from the first between 4 and 5 o’clock. Over the past two decades, the Maison has continued to iterate on the complication throughout its catalog, specifically within the Excalibur line.
 

At last year’s Watches and Wonders, we saw Roger Dubuis put on a full celebration of the tourbillon with four new timepieces: the Orbis in Machina, the Excalibur Sunrise Double Tourbillon, the Excalibur Monotourbillon Titanium, and the Excalibur Dragon Monotourbillon.
 

This year, with the exciting trifecta of anniversaries for the brand, its interpretation of the tourbillon, and the Excalibur collection, we can’t wait to see if Roger Dubuis can outdo the models it presented last year.