Chopard is best known for what photographs well: diamonds turning loose between two sapphire crystals, the Palme d’Or and the Cannes red carpet it has dressed since 1998. The Swiss house is a fully fledged watch Manufacture, and has spent three decades quietly proving it.
The precision came first. Louis-Ulysse Chopard set up in Sonvilier in 1860, making pocket watches and chronometers accurate enough for railwaymen, who had to trust them, and fine enough for Tsar Nicholas II, who did not. The jewellery arrived a century later, when Karl Scheufele III, a German watchmaker and goldsmith, acquired the firm in 1963 and married the two disciplines. His children, Caroline and Karl-Friedrich Scheufele, run it today as co-presidents of a company that has remained independent and family-owned throughout.
What made it remarkable was the paperwork. The movement was chronometer-certified by COSC and carried the Poinçon de Genève, a pairing few calibres even attempt, and it took Watch of the Year in 1997. Thirty years on, that architecture remains the cornerstone of a collection which now extends to tourbillons, perpetual calendars and minute repeaters. This is haute horlogerie by any measure, from a house most people file under jewellery — which is either an oversight or, given how little Chopard does to correct it, a form of confidence.
The same seriousness runs elsewhere. Chopard committed to sourcing 100 per cent ethical gold across its production, tracing supply back to responsible artisanal mining communities — an expensive undertaking for a house that uses a great deal of it. At Range Rover House Muskoka this August, the collection appears with L’ORO, its Toronto retail partner.
