A Helsinki Exhibition Showcases Watches by Kari Voutilainen

A ten-time winner on the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, the annual trade occasion usually known as the “Oscars of watchmaking,” Kari Voutilainen is among the most prestigious figures in unbiased horology.

And in March, his work truly went to the Academy Awards: Cillian Murphy, who gained finest actor for “Oppenheimer,” wore a yellow gold brooch by the Hong Kong design home Sauvereign that Mr. Voutilainen had completed in guilloché, the ornamental patterning that has become his signature.

However Mr. Voutilainen, who has lived and labored in Switzerland for greater than 30 years, has not forgotten his roots. In late April, he visited his native Finland to open a small however complete exhibition showcasing his profession.

“Voutilainen: The Art of Watchmaking” is scheduled to run by way of Sept. 29 on the Finnish Museum of Horology and Jewellery Kruunu in Espoo, a metropolis simply outdoors the capital, Helsinki. The exhibition options 31 watches by Mr. Voutilainen in addition to sketches, images and movies linked together with his work.

Regardless of a spring snowstorm on the opening day that disabled Helsinki’s community of avenue trams and briefly halted its mild rail system, about 130 folks turned out to greet Mr. Voutilainen, who grew up within the northern port metropolis of Kemi and attended the Finnish College of Watchmaking, headquartered in Espoo.

“It’s been actually fascinating,” Mr. Voutilainen, 61, mentioned in a cellphone interview a couple of days later. “The exhibition has made me actually cease and take into consideration what we’ve got been doing for the previous 35 years. And I begin to understand that we actually have been doing loads of issues.”

These “issues” have included designing timepieces for his personal label, Voutilainen; overseeing his case- and dial-making companies and, most not too long ago, renovating a former horology college in Fleurier, Switzerland, right into a guilloché atelier to work on his creations in addition to these of shopper manufacturers.

Mr. Voutilainen mentioned the brand new workshop, scheduled to open in August, would use instruments and machines that after belonged to Brodbeck Guillochage, the workshop of the acclaimed guillocheur Georges Brodbeck, and do enterprise underneath that title.

It additionally will permit his personal model, headquartered within the Swiss city of St. Sulpice, to broaden. By basing a few of its artisans within the new atelier, the model “can have a couple of watchmakers extra and we are able to make a brand new workshop for the distinctive items, small sequence and prototypes,” he mentioned. “So we could have rather more house.”

“Why Not?”

Mr. Voutilainen mentioned he initially was hesitant to simply accept the museum’s provide of an exhibition. Collectors in the US and Europe must comply with mortgage their watches after which ship them to Finland, which might not be straightforward, he mentioned.

However, “with extra pondering, I used to be pondering, ’Really why not?’” he mentioned. “It’s a technique to present the work that we’ve been doing. It’s additionally for me a technique to present the era of younger guys what we’ve got been doing, and that we are able to do issues with our lives, but it surely takes time and motivation and power.”

The exhibition additionally options the ten fashions from the Voutilainen X Leijona assortment, his collaboration with the 117-year-old Finnish model Leijona that started in 2019. (Leijona watches, based on its web site, have been “the primary watch owned by many Finns” — and Mr. Voutilainen was amongst them.)

One exhibit is especially pricey to Mr. Voutilainen: a pocket watch he created in 1994 whereas working for the restoration atelier Parmigiani Mesure et Artwork du Temps. “It was my free-time work,” he mentioned. “I used to be working, however I did that work throughout my night time and on weekends.”

Two years later, the tourbillon timepiece was displayed at an exhibition in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, bringing him to the eye of collectors and different watchmakers. (A tourbillon is designed to counteract the results of gravity on a watch’s timekeeping accuracy.)

Mr. Voutilainen mentioned he paid homage to that pocket watch this yr with a small sequence of tourbillon timepieces, certainly one of which has been included within the exhibition.

“So these two issues,” he mentioned — referring to the pocket watch and the brand new tourbillion — “they’re fairly significant for me in the best way that they’re connecting a little bit little bit of historical past.”

Watches and Jewellery

The museum formally opened in 1988 because the Finnish Museum of Horology within the basement of the Finnish College of Watchmaking, which was based in 1944 and moved to Espoo in 1959 from Lahti, a metropolis about 105 kilometers (65 miles) north of Helsinki. The museum, which has moved a couple of instances over time, got here to its present 220-square-meter (2,370-square-foot) website in 2021

Essi Pullinen, the museum’s director, mentioned that very same yr it expanded its focus to incorporate jewellery. And, she added, it determined to retailer its everlasting assortment of watches and clocks to create house for six-month-long exhibitions of labor by Finns equivalent to Mr. Voutilainen, in addition to the occasional small, short-term show, too.

In 2022, for instance, the museum displayed creations by the jewellery designer Bjorn Weckstrom. His model, Lapponia, was Finland’s best-known jewelry name internationally till it was discontinued in 2020. (Amongst “Star Wars” followers, Mr. Weckstrom is well known for his Planetoid Valleys necklace, which Princess Leia wore within the ultimate scene of the primary movie.)

In accordance with Ms. Pullinen, who’s a goldsmith, the museum’s twin focus has been well-received by watch and jewellery fanatics.

“Watches and jewellery in Finland have historically been offered collectively in the identical outlets,” she mentioned. “So, within the eyes of the shopper, they’re virtually like one.”