Chaumet

Chaumet was founded in Paris in 1780 by jeweler Marie-Étienne Nitot, trained in the world of court jewelry. After the French Revolution, the house found its consecration under the First Empire: in 1804 Nitot became the official jeweler to Napoleon Bonaparte, creating among other things the coronation sword and some of the most famous jewels associated with the imperial family. It was in this same period, in 1811, that the house made for Princess Augusta of Bavaria one of the first wristwatches in watchmaking history, fitted with a movement signed by Breguet: an episode that places Chaumet among the absolute pioneers of the wrist-worn watch, even though it remained, by vocation, a jewelry house.

Over the course of the nineteenth century leadership changed hands several times — from Nitot's son to the Fossin family, then to the Morels — until the arrival of Joseph Chaumet, who gave his own name to the house and in 1907 moved its headquarters to number 12 Place Vendôme, an address the house still occupies today and which remains one of the symbols of Parisian high jewelry. Over the course of the twentieth century Chaumet more systematically developed its own watchmaking department, pairing jewelry production with watch collections conceived as a natural continuation of its own aesthetic language.

After a period of serious financial crisis in the 1980s, which led in 1987 to the Investcorp fund entering the company's capital, the house was acquired in October 1999 by the LVMH group, which relaunched its activity internationally. It should be noted that, even today, watchmaking remains a more limited activity for Chaumet compared to jewelry: several lines born as jewelry collections — rings, bracelets — have since been reinterpreted also in watch form, often made in collaboration with Swiss manufactures.