Corum

Brand history

Founded 1955 by Gaston Ries and René Bannwart in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The Golden Bridge (1980) and Bubble (2000) established Corum's reputation for design-first watchmaking that operates outside conventional Swiss house aesthetics.

Founded 1955 in Le Locle by René Bannwart and Gaston Ries. Corum achieved early recognition with the Bridge movement (1980): a caliber whose base plate is replaced by a series of parallel bridges running the width of the dial, turning the movement into the watch face, and the Golden Bridge (1980), which housed the linear mechanism within an open-worked baguette tonneau case. The Admiral series and the Bubble (2000, an oversized spherical-crystal sport piece) broadened the brand's identity. Corum was acquired by China Haidian Holdings in 2013; the modern brand carries the historical catalog with limited new development. The honest note: Corum in its heyday produced some of the most visually inventive watches in Swiss production; the current iteration under Chinese ownership is more of a catalog-maintenance operation than a creative force. The Bridge-caliber references remain the strongest collector pieces.