Jean-François Bautte

(Geneva 1772 - 1837 Geneva)

From a modest working class family background, and orphaned at a very early age, Jean-François Bautte was put into apprenticeship from the age of 12, and trained in various trades, as a case assembler, guilloche etcher, watchmaker, jeweller and goldsmith. He signed his first creations in 1791 and, with his talents as a craftsman reinforced by a head for business, soon developed his own manufacture, bringing together under the same roof all the watchmaking professions of the period. This was his production premises for timepieces, jewels, machines, music boxes and other objets de vertu. With European monarchs among his customers, this self-made man opened a branch in Paris and a sales office in Florence, while also trading with Turkey, India and China.

Dumas, Balzac and Ruskin, among others, devoted pages to Geneva's most famous watchmaker-jeweller of the period and one of the inventors of the extra-thin watch, while his grateful workers had an obelisk erected in his memory, which can still be seen today in the Plainpalais cemetery in Geneva.