Orphaned very young, he was apprenticed at the age of twelve and trained variously as a case fitter, guillocheur, watchmaker, jeweller and goldsmith. He signed his first watches in 1791 and, with his talents as a craftsman reinforced by a head for business, soon developed his own manufacture, bringing together under the same roof all the watchmaking professions of the period. This was his production premises for timepieces, jewels, machines, music boxes and other “objets de vertu”. Counting European royalty among his clients, this shrewd businessman and industrialist established commercial dealings not only with the courts of Europe, but also with Turkey, India and China.
Dumas, Balzac and Ruskin, among others, devoted pages to Geneva's most famous watchmaker-jeweller and one of the inventors of the extra-thin watch. Upon his death in 1837, he left an extraordinarily rich industrial and cultural heritage to his successors Jacques Bautte and Jean-Samuel Rossel.
