Clock Works According to L’Epée 1839
Stephen Silver Offers Silicon Valley’s Most Intriguing Luxury Clocks
There is only one name to consider in Swiss clocks, that of L’Epée 1839, Switzerland’s oldest and most luxurious clockmaker. Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry was among the first retailers in the United States to carry L’Epée 1839, and the manufacture has since grown to become a significant player in our roster of independent horology brands.
Long renowned for its refined complications and uncompromising quality, the clockmaker has in recent years branched out from its traditional clock offerings to embrace unorthodox new forms and daring collaborations, notably with Max Büsser, founder of MB&F.
Büsser’s longstanding interest in the creation of horological objets led him to collaborate with L’Epée 1839 in the early 2010s, and in 2014, the companies released the Starfleet Machine. This wildly designed clock, with a horizontal movement, a conical rotating time display, and prominently curved legs. In aesthetic terms, it seemed poles apart from anything L’Epée had previously built. The startlingly modern Starfleet Machine prominently displayed L’Epée 1839’s traditional qualities of precision and ultra-high finishing inside its open architecture.
A remarkable string of collaborations between the brands followed and has extended until the present, including Melchior, the Sherman, the Medusa, Destination Moon, Octopod, and the T-Rex, among others. Each underlines the truth that clocks can transcend their traditional timekeeping function as design-centric talking pieces that reflect modern lifestyles and modern artistic sensibilities.
L’Epée 1839 continued the house’s renaissance with other daring clock designs, examples of which are now proudly featured at the Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry boutique and timepiece salon at Rosewood Sand Hill. Time Fast, one of the brand’s more recent such creations, debuted in 2019 as the amalgamation of a clock in the body of 1960’s era race car. The clockwork also drives a moving drivetrain.
The clockmaker’s collaborations have also continued in recent years with Pistol and Golden Boy, created in combination with Unnamed Society, and each adaption of clocks in the forms of famous firearms. Vanitas takes the form of a Dia de los Muertos skull as famously interpreted by independent watchmaker Fiona Kruger. Each of these L’Epée 1839 clocks from Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry is a worthy living room centerpiece, or a dream gift that redefines what a clock can be.
Discover L’Epée 1839 clocks in Menlo Park, California, at Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry