Edouard Bovet was a Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 watchmaker

Watchmaker

A watchmaker is an artisan who makes and repairs watches. Since virtually all watches are now factory made, most modern watchmakers solely repair watches. However, originally they were master craftsmen who built watches, including all their parts, by hand...

 and founder of the Bovet watch company.

He was born in Fleurier

Fleurier

Fleurier was a municipality in the district of Val-de-Travers in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. On 1 January 2009, the former municipalities of Boveresse, Buttes, Couvet, Fleurier, Les Bayards, Môtiers, Noiraigue, Saint-Sulpice and Travers merged to form Val-de-Travers.The Nobel...

 in Neuchâtel, moved to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1814 and went on to Canton

Guangzhou

Guangzhou , known historically as Canton or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in the People's Republic of China. Located in southern China on the Pearl River, about north-northwest of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a key national transportation hub and trading port...

 in 1818 where he set up in business in partnership with his brothers in 1822. The enterprise, that had luxury watch

Watch

A watch is a small timepiece, typically worn either on the wrist or attached on a chain and carried in a pocket, with wristwatches being the most common type of watch used today. They evolved in the 17th century from spring powered clocks, which appeared in the 15th century. The first watches were...

es made in Switzerland for export to China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, was a resounding success. Two generations later the Bovets were running a flourishing Swiss-Chinese commercial enterprise and were no longer interested in watchmaking. The name was sold several times and relaunched in 1994. The current Bovet watches are modeled on their luxury precursors from the 19th century and look like pocket watch

Pocket watch

A pocket watch is a watch that is made to be carried in a pocket, as opposed to a wristwatch, which is strapped to the wrist. They were the most common type of watch from their development in the 16th century until wristwatches became popular after World War I during which a transitional design,...

es for the wrist.

Although the "Genève

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

" tag is virtually compulsory for Swiss prestige name watches in the highest price bracket, it is the lesser known place name "Fleurier" that graces the watches from the Bovet company in Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

: for the Bovet originated from this village in the Val-de-Travers, to the west of Neuchâtel. Watchmaking was introduced there between 1730 and 1740 by David Vaucher, probably a pupil of the legendary Daniel JeanRichard. The number of watchmakers in the Val-de-Travers grew very rapidly in the first half of the 19th century. The lace

Lace

Lace is an openwork fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, made by machine or by hand. The holes can be formed via removal of threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric. Lace-making is an ancient craft. True lace was...

 making that had provided work for a good third of the people living in the valley had been replaced by the much lower cost production on jacquard machines in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Flanders

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

.

The Bovet family was responsible for Fleurier’s specialization on the Chinese market. The birth of Edouard Bovet, the son of Jean Frédéric Bovet, was registered in 1797. Four more sons and a daughter were born in the following years. After completing his apprenticeship as a watchmaker, Edouard Bovet and two of his brothers moved to London, then the center of watch assembly and the watch trade. He found a job at once, with the Magniac company who sent him to Canton in 1818 as watch repairer; this was the sole Chinese port that tolerated Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an merchants and businessmen - the so-called “red-haired barbarians”.

The flourishing watch trade with China prompted Edouard Bovet to set up on his own in 1822: he founded a general partnership with the two brothers in London and one brother who had remained in Fleurier; the fourth and youngest brother also entered the business. Soon every first class watch in China with a high practical value and elegant exterior was simply called "Bovet" . Pearl ornamentation and enamel miniature painting carried out in Geneva on Bovet watches ensured first class aesthetics at prices that, in contrast to the exaggerated luxury watches of the time, were affordable, at least for the upper class.

For years a Bovet watch was considered an asset in China and was accepted in payment everywhere. The movement was frequently finely engraved and chased and could be observed through a glass cover at the back. The central second hand that jumped every second, like modern quartz watches, was a Bovet specialty. Bovet adapted its production to the Chinese tradition of making gifts of valuable objects (statues, vases, horses even concubines) in pairs. So he could often sell two identical watches at the same time: if one failed, there was a replacement to hand. But Bovet’s enamel painters found it very difficult to paint two identical but mirror-image miniatures.

Edouard Bovet returned to Fleurier in 1830 as a made man, accompanied by his four year old half-Chinese son Edouard-Georges. At that time it was customary for the European merchants in China to take a "temporary" wife for the duration of their stay. If children were born of this liaison, the father had to accept full responsibility. As a fervent republican, Bovet exposed himself in the abortive Neuchâtel revolution against Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

n rule in 1831. The house that his brothers had built for him in Fleurier according to his written instructions from China had to remain empty for the time being. Bovet had to move to Besançon

Besançon

Besançon , is the capital and principal city of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France. It had a population of about 237,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2008...

 where he continued watchmaking with the help of other exiled watchmakers.

Edouard Bovet’s brothers and nephews - all of them shareholders in the company - made sure that the cornerstones of the Bovet empire in Fleurier, London and Canton continued to flourish. Once the political situation was back to normal, in 1840, the firm was re-registered as Bovet Frères et Cie.; the share capital amounted to 1 million franc

Franc

The franc is the name of several currency units, most notably the Swiss franc, still a major world currency today due to the prominence of Swiss financial institutions and the former currency of France, the French franc until the Euro was adopted in 1999...

s. Edouard Bovet died in 1849; he lived long enough to witness the triumph of the republic and the withdrawal of the Prussians in the previous year. The succession was settled and the production for China continued; in 1855 Bovet was awarded a gold medal at the world exhibition in Paris for an absolutely identical pair of watches ordered by the emperor of China.