Maurice de Mauriac

Daniel Dreifuss founded Maurice de Mauriac in Zurich in 1997, after training as a watchmaker in Switzerland and working with several Swiss maisons. From the outset the project was set up as an atelier rather than a brand: small annual production, no mass distribution, direct relationships with the buyer, and a full bespoke-commission service alongside a modest catalogue of ready-made references. The workshop still sits at Tödistrasse 48 in Zurich, and every watch is hand-assembled and hand-finished there.

The house style is minimalist and legibility-first. Dials are clean, indices are usually applied bar or Arabic, and the design vocabulary sits between Bauhaus and Zurich modernism. Case shapes range from classic round to the maison's signature cushion, tonneau and off-set profiles. Movements are Swiss-sourced (predominantly ETA, Sellita and select complications from La Joux-Perret), then decorated and regulated in-house before assembly. Chronographs, complications and one-off commissions form a significant share of the workshop's output.

Since 2015 the atelier has been co-run by Daniel's twin sons Massimo and Leonardo Dreifuss, who joined the business after their own training. The generational transition has kept the maison consistent while opening a small but active social channel around the workshop's day-to-day. Annual production remains modest - a few hundred pieces per year - and every watch leaves with a personalised engraving option and direct workshop follow-up. Maurice de Mauriac is not trying to be big; it is trying to be personal, and it has done that consistently for over 25 years.