Mathey-Tissot

Mathey-Tissot was founded in 1886 in Les Ponts-de-Martel, in the mountains of the Swiss Jura, on the initiative of Charles-Edmond Mathey-Henry, known as Edmond Mathey-Tissot, who from the very start specialized the manufacture in the production of minute-repeater pocket watches and high-precision chronographs. The brand quickly built an international reputation: in 1914 six of its chronometers achieved "Class A" classification at the Kew Observatory competition, and the company received the Grand Prize at the Swiss National Exhibition in Bern. In the following decades it became a supplier of chronographs to the United States Army — General Pershing gave several examples to his own staff during the First World War — and to the British Royal Navy during the Second.

The brand's ownership history has been anything but linear. On the founder's death in 1929, leadership passed first to his wife Emma and then, from 1933, to his two sons Jean-Edmond and Charles-Etienne. In 1968 the company was taken over by American entrepreneur Jules Elefant, whose family ran it until the 1990s; it was during this period, between the 1960s and 1970s, that Elvis Presley bought several customized automatic Mathey-Tissot watches for his own entourage. After going through a commercial downturn in which the brand focused on watches inspired by other major houses, in 1994 Alberto Frigerio Bonvicino took over general management, moving production to Fribourg; in 2013 Frigerio became the owner, bringing the headquarters back to Geneva and starting a relaunch.

Today Mathey-Tissot combines a very extensive catalog, distributed mainly through accessible sales channels such as the American TV shopping network QVC and online retailers (Ashford, Amazon, Jomashop), with a targeted return to its own historical roots: the manufacture was in fact among the first suppliers of the legendary Type XX aviation chronograph for the French military in the 1950s-60s — also making some examples on behalf of Breguet — and in recent years has revived that heritage with collaborations with the independent watchmaking world (such as the American Massena LAB) and reissues faithful to the original models.