Maarten & Jessica Pieters

Maarten joined WOSTEP in 2002 as Assistant Director and subsequently held the Director position for fifteen years from 2003 to 2018. Jessica joined the WOSTEP teaching and management team in 2013. Between them, they were fully committed to the education of watchmakers, this was the thread that finally wove them together.

At this time, WOSTEP was more than a workplace. It was an international community where generations of watchmakers, teachers and independent makers earned skills and shared knowledge. For Maarten and Jessica, it meant years spent travelling the world, teaching and certifying watchmakers and carrying the knowledge and culture of traditional watchmaking with them.

Throughout his tenure, Maarten championed comprehensive watchmaking and micromechanical education, both in Switzerland and throughout WOSTEP’s international partnership schools, his perspective, due to the manner in which his skills were passed on to him, deviated from the prevailing industry view of providing somewhat restricted training solely for after sales service needs.

One project that was integral to Maarten’s philosophy as Director was the introduction of the WOSTEP W-01 school watch.

Launched for WOSTEP students both in Switzerland and worldwide, the project asked students not simply to pass examinations, but to put their developing and hard-earned skills into practice by making something tangible.

For Maarten, the W-01 school watch was a fundamental part of watchmaking education and something embodying the experience of watchmaking. A personal and physical record of the time and effort invested by each WOSTEP student and the dedication of the teachers behind them.

At WOSTEP both Maarten and Jessica worked to serve a common philosophy, that skills become meaningful when they are put to use. Every watchmaking student deserves a complete educational foundation, one that is not dictated solely by what the industry considers relevant at any given moment. Times change and products evolve, but at a certain level, timepieces are certain to outlast their makers. Who, then, will be their caretakers? And who will be the next generation of creators?

The WOSTEP W-01 School Watch N°100 later became part of the 2017 Only Watch charity auction, representing a remarkable group of WOSTEP alumni, teachers and independent watchmakers and raising money for a good cause. It remains the only official occasion that a WOSTEP W-01 School Watch was made available to the public.

The success of the W-01 led to another idea.

The watch industry and their clientele were becoming increasingly fascinated by complex mechanical watches, particularly through the work of pioneering independent watchmakers who were pushing traditional techniques and finishing in new directions and to incredible quality standards.

Maarten wanted to create a unique educational project: the WOSTEP W-02 Tourbillon School Watch.

The intention was not simply to expose students to a tourbillon, but to give advanced students an opportunity to immerse themselves in the demands of chronometry and the construction, adjustment and assembly of the highly complex escapement in a functional piece.

The W-02, 18’000vph 2-minute tourbillon prototype (not shown) was officially presented to the public at WOSTEP’s 50th anniversary in 2016, in the company of many of the watchmakers who had helped define the independent horological landscape of the period.

Unfortunately, the W-02 Tourbillon project was never fully realised and soon after, in 2018 Maarten and Jessica left WOSTEP. 

The concept of providing highly specialised training on sophisticated products, however, did not disappear…

In 2019, Maarten and Jessica officially established their company time2 sàrl.

Beginning as a continuation of the work that had occupied much of their professional lives: time2 was conceived to provide services in consulting, prototyping, specialised training and the development of practical watchmaking education and related supports. The first clients of time2 were mainly Swiss brands looking to broaden their international after-sales service training.

It was at this time, in Les Hauts-Geneveys that the lineage of the T2 (standing for time2) calibres truly began.

Maarten and Jessica developed three significant projects at this time: the T2-01 manual-winding calibre, the T2-03 tourbillon training calibre (as pictured above center), and a large-format detent tourbillon escapement project amongst a plethora of micro-mechanical and watchmaking training concepts for watchmaking schools.

At the time, these projects were not created as commercial pieces, rather as unique and highly specialised training tools for understanding, teaching and craft, where students could work directly on the mechanisms themselves, in some cases making the components rather than merely observing them or studying the theory.

While they were busy building their new company in Switzerland, Maarten and Jessica were approached with an unusual proposition: to establish a traditional Swiss watchmaking training center in Cambodia.

The project would become the Prince Horology Vocational Training Center in Phnom Penh

Together, they were tasked with establishing the school in terms of set-up, recruitment, developing the curriculum, assessments and creating the supporting educational material. Equipment and savoir-faire all imported from Switzerland and the program was structured around the depth and discipline of traditional Swiss watchmaking education, including manually manufacturing balance staffs, winding stems, pinions and gears to precision timing adjustments and encasing.

For five years, and withstanding a worldwide pandemic, Switzerland and Phnom Penh became two parts of their working and private life.

Their Cambodian students were at the heart of it.

Local students were provided full scholarships and world class watchmaking education in one of the best equipped watchmaking schools in the world. They were given the opportunity to enter a profession that was, for many of them, completely unknown but for some was already a burning passion.

The school attracted international attention even before its doors officially opened in 2020. The project was well documented in the press worldwide and curiosity brought many visitors to the training center from Government officials, the World Bank, the Red Cross, the Australian and Japanese Ambassadors, an American senator, Swiss government representatives and even renowned Swiss brands and the students, completely deserving of their interest were able to demonstrate their hard-earned watchmaking skills, on par with anywhere in the world and even to the envy of many.

Maarten and Jessica felt privileged to be entrusted with the aspirations of those who chose watchmaking as a career in such an unlikely setting, and with that came a responsibility to give them as much knowledge, skill and opportunity as possible.

The aim was never simply to teach them how to assemble or service watches, graduates would need a much broader range of skills for working in such an underserved region.

The Cambodian students were taught how to make, adjust, finish and truly understand this thing called watchmaking, some of them were also taken on as teachers assistants to ensure the longevity of the school as Maarten and Jessica would not stay forever.

The students at Prince Horology were also given the opportunity to make their own watches. Differing from the standardised W-01 school watch project that Maarten oversaw at WOSTEP, the Khmer students designed, milled from raw stock and finished their own bridges, they cut their own gears and pinions, burnished their pivots and some of them even designed and made their own hands and dials also from raw materials. An impressive progression from starting out in a country with little to no culture of Swiss precision to mastering highly advanced skills and machines that many watchmaking students never get the chance to encounter.

With the success and momentum of the project, the decision was made to bring the T2-03 tourbillon into the Cambodian project. Maarten and Jessica agreed to produce thirty pieces in total. Fifteen pieces for training and fifteen highly finished pieces as a limited series to raise money for the school. A unique training experience on a Swiss made tourbillon, only available to the students in Cambodia at that time, paired with a substantial piece to fund the school and raise its reputation as a competence centre of watchmaking excellence.

And there an already intriguing story, grows into an epic…

In mid 2021, what began as a limited training project for their students grew into something much larger. Upon request of the Cambodian Prime Minister, the T2-03 calibre was to be adapted as the basis for the ASEAN Lotus Tourbillon. As time2, Maarten and Jessica were commissioned to create twenty-five Lotus Tourbillons as gifts for world leaders attending the ASEAN summit in 2022, all pieces were serial numbered and engraved T2-03S.

Maarten and Jessica agreed to the use of their calibre and to the creation of the piece for two reasons, to highlight the achievements of the Cambodian nation that they had quickly fallen in love with and to raise awareness of the school, as such the graduates would find employment on an international stage and face less resistance due to the unusual nature of being a watchmaker certified from a watchmaking school in Cambodia.

The ASEAN Lotus Tourbillon was indeed a remarkable project, but for Maarten and Jessica its greatest significance was never the attention it received for its technical acheivements or its’ aesthetic beauty.

It was the opportunity to see an educational concept become something tangible on a grand scale in promotion of the pioneering spirit of Cambodia’s first Swiss trained watchmakers.

The timepieces themselves were ambassadors for the school, for Cambodian skill and for the students and graduates as they stepped out into the world as certified watchmakers.

Aside from the straps from Delugs in Singapore, the ASEAN Lotus Tourbillon was completely manufactured and finished in Switzerland. The movements were assembled piece by piece in what is now Atelier Pieters in Les Hauts-Geneveys. The cases, hands and dials were also produced in Switzerland. The final encasing and final testing of the watches was undertaken at the school in Cambodia by Maarten Pieters and then instructor, Stéphane Monard.

The time2 T2-03 calibre of Maarten and Jessica was deeply connected to Cambodia through its purpose, its students and the beautiful story of Swiss tradition taking root in such an unlikely setting. The first expression of their in-house tourbillon calibre being celebrated worldwide and where it became a true platform for the tradition and skill passed on that it was always intended to be.

Atelier Pieters is located in the Chalet des Gollières, on the edge of a forest in the foothills of the Neuchâtel Jura mountains. The chalet was built by the Association des Sociétés des Neuchâtelois hors Canton (ASNHC), an organisation for Neuchâtel expatriates who wished to preserve their bond with their home-canton and to nurture their “Neuchâtel spirit.”

Situated in Les Hauts-Geneveys, the Chalet des Gollières was a haven for the Neuchâtelois to return, reunite, and celebrate their cultural heritage. It is only fitting that this place, once dedicated to preserving identity and tradition, is now home to Atelier Pieters and the culture of fine watchmaking, a craft deeply rooted in the canton of Neuchâtel since the 17th century.

Today, the first two floors of our four-storey chalet house Atelier Pieters, a modest machining workshop (equipped with manually operated, conventional machines only), an intimate finishing and assembly workshop, and our office. The remaining spaces form our family home, blending life and craft under one roof.

On our premises we have two 24/7 security guards; Bélla (Bernese mountain dog) and Arley (Cavalier King-Charles spaniel). They assist us with front of house and guest welcome services.