Jean Daniel Nicolas Two-Minute Tourbillon

What happens if you’re an independent watchmaker and you’ve sold your company to great success? What if you no longer have access to use your own name? Do you retire to the Maldives? Well, not in this instance. This says Jean Daniel Nicolas on the dial, but it is in all respects truly a Daniel Roth. JDN is the pen name Daniel Roth the man, not the brand, is using for his own work today—as LVMH now owns the rights to printing Daniel Roth on the dial. Arguably, this work of his wiser years is the greatest ever. Particularly because if, like some, you’ve never warmed to the Ellipse case of the Daniel Roth brand, JDN comes in traditional (39mm) circular flavor.

The influences are obvious as well. There are nods to his time restarting Breguet and the 3350’s Lemania ébauche in the architecture. There are nods to early Daniel Roth Tourbillons like the C187 ‘flanking’ engraved sections of the base plate and finishing technique. The black polished bat-shaped bridge is new however, and rather fetching. They’re smart, a functional choice that allows the 60 second scale to not be cut off. On either side, an engraving with an individual number, ala Breguet. This two-minute Tourbillon was designed on paper with pencils, not CAD. It is made in ways AL Breguet himself would recognize, with little to no modern methods. Just consider the stripes on back. They’re not Genevan, they’re U-shaped. Roth saw the treatment on an old pocket watch, loved them, and taught himself to make them.

It is Roth’s complete vernacular as an independent watchmaker in one tourbillon, reinvented with wisdom. Daniel Roth is known as the godfather of independent watchmaking. He was, if the very first, among the first of the new wave in independent, even eponymous, watchmaking. Yet, often the more daring case shape stops many from being attracted to his own work and pushes them to the time he was working under Breguet. Well, for the patient and well-heeled, JDN is the answer. There is no compromise to this work. Let LVMH develop the Roth name. I have no doubts both great and awful things will come of it. But Roth the man, working under JDN, is unassailable. It’s just a joy to see a master of a craft at his peak.

This example (separate to the example pictured, but both in functionally identically perfect condition) is offered by a well-regarded London retailer, complete kit.