The Imhof story is one of craftsmanship, innovation and family, and it begins in 1888 with Frédéric Imhof, an artist who made dials for the major clock companies of his day. What started with a single dial maker grew into a full clock manufacturing facility shipping timepieces to the four corners of the world. His son Arthur then branched out on his own, founding the Manufacture de Pendulette d'Art Arthur Imhof S.A. in La Chaux-de-Fonds, integrating the production of clock mechanisms into the business and setting out to democratise clock ownership with affordable lines that kept the company's reputation for high-quality timekeepers.
Inside the Imhof workshop, métiers d'art met precision horology. At the height of its activity the catalogue ran to hundreds of exclusive deluxe models, from practical travel alarm clocks to ornamental gem-set table clocks with secret cabinets, including period-style pieces with enamel dials and highly complicated mechanisms — worldtimers, perpetual calendars, mystery clocks and movements with eight-day power reserves. Among the pieces collectors still hunt are the singing bird clock of around 1960, a brass birdcage whose automaton bird sings and flaps its wings at the press of a button; the Swiss inclined plane gravity clock, whose drum movement is driven by a large counterweight and which travels down the full length of its plane over the course of a week before being lifted back to the top; and the Tempus Fugit globe clock of the 1960s, whose luminous globe glows in the dark and shows the hours on its lower half and the minutes on its upper half.
The brand is based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the town in the Swiss Jura that owes its urban development to watchmaking and is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its current wristwatch range is the Arthur Collection, named after the founder's son. Every Imhof timepiece is crafted in Switzerland and carries the Swiss Made label, and many are tested by the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres (COSC), the same pursuit of accuracy that Arthur Imhof demanded of his mechanisms.
