There’s a well-worn path in watchmaking: spend years building someone else’s brand, then go off and build your own. Max Büsser did it when he left Harry Winston Rare Timepieces to start MB&F. Sylvain Berneron did it when he walked away from being Breitling’s creative director. Now Francis Jacquerye, formerly Head of Design at Longines, is taking the same route with Svea Atelier, a new Swedish brand launching today with a five-piece debut collection called Monolith.
You wouldn’t necessarily guess the Longines connection from looking at it. If anything, the watch it brings to mind is the Rolex King Midas, Gérald Genta’s asymmetric 1960s design with the same brutalist, cut-from-a-block feel. That’s good company for a debut. Svea is an old poetic name for Sweden. The brand is based in Landskrona, where every watch is assembled in-house from components made by partners elsewhere, and that sense of place runs through the design. Each piece starts as a hand sketch drawing on mid-century Scandinavian modernism, architecture and period objects, before moving on to 3D-printed prototypes.
The case is where the ambition really shows. Monolith drops the conventional round case for an asymmetric form, and it’s the shape that defines the collection. All five watches share it: 27.5mm wide, 27mm long and 5.5mm thick, in 316L stainless steel, slim enough to sit flat under a cuff. Lattice and Fjord get a vintage-style brushed finish, Oxblood and Tiger Eye add a layer of gold PVD, and Onyx is left in uncoated steel.
The collection splits into two lines, distinguished by the dial. The Core series offers three takes on the same period mood: Lattice, Oxblood and Fjord. Lattice is the quietest, its silver linen dial almost merging with the brushed steel around it. Oxblood and Fjord bring more drama, with a dark maroon gloss and a deep blue gloss respectively, each standing out sharply against its case. The Atelier series replaces the dial with polished hardstone: tiger’s eye for Monolith Tiger Eye, black onyx for Monolith Onyx. Because it’s natural stone, no two dials will be identical. Svea is billing the Atelier series as limited, though it hasn’t yet said how many pieces that will mean.
Mechanically, there’s not much to dwell on, and that’s deliberate. All five watches use the same Swiss-made Ronda 1062 quartz movement, under a sapphire crystal with a six-layer anti-reflective coating, with water resistance of a modest 50m. This collection is more about the style and less what’s ticking inside it. The bracelet adjusts via removable links and closes with a single-fold deployant clasp, and each watch ships in a burl wood box.
Pricing fits that positioning. Core pieces cost around £570 (€680) and the stone-dialled Atelier pair around £650 (€780), both excluding VAT. That feels fair given the in-house assembly and natural materials, even if it’s a tough sell to anyone shopping purely on movement spec. Pre-orders open 21 October, with deliveries expected from early January 2027. As a debut, it’s a clear and coherent design statement.
Price and Specs:
More details at Svea Atelier.
