Founded in 1985 by Vincent Calabrese and Svend Andersen, the AHCI (Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants) champions independent watchmaking in its purest form. Today, it numbers 36 members, and its ethos, nay, mission, is to perpetuate the art of independent watch and clockmaking. With a singular focus, this year the AHCI counts 36 watch and clock makers, five candidates, and 18 former members from 16 countries, each with a different voice and a personal interpretation of the art of watchmaking. The AHCI was never meant to be an incubator for watchmakers seeking the security of big-brand ateliers, but was conceived to protect and promote artisanal horology amid growing industrialization.
Over the years, the AHCI has incubated some of the craft’s greatest talents, and its member list includes greats like Kari Voutilainen and Philippe Dufour, as well as avant-garde futurists like Felix Baumgartner and Japanese Sensei Hajime Asaoka. The AHCI aims to foster an enduring culture of creativity and collaboration, and today continues to serve as both a proving ground and a bridge between generations. The latter being an important point today, as some of the masters of the game are well past their middle-aged prime, cue the AHCI Candidates.
A process was established in the 1990s for watchmakers to become Candidates before being accepted as full members. And in fact, some renowned watchmakers never progressed beyond candidate status, notably Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey, as well as the first female candidate, Eva Leube. Today, the Candidates are spread across Europe, from Italian Marco Guarino to Dutchman Machiel Hulsman, and three more, including Maciej Misnik from Poland, who has been creating his own timepieces since 2019. In the spirit of independence, all the candidates have a different take on horology. I asked all candidates a few questions about what inspired them to pursue this independent path, their latest work, and what drives them. We also talked about how the AHCI helps them and future candidates with the critical Succession aspect, much needed in this small-scale artisanal business.
Marco Guarino
Born in Italy and an AHCI Candidate since 2024, Marco Guarino has nurtured a lifelong passion for astronomy that naturally evolved into a fascination with astronomical watches. After attending the Turin watchmaking school, he opened his own atelier to create timepieces that chart celestial rhythms—from the equation of time to sidereal hours, perpetual calendars, and the lunar equation of time.”I’ve been passionate about watches since I was young,” Guarino says, “and no one from my family had ever worked with or collected any type of watch, so it’s an atypical passion.”
While most graduates turned to repair or restoration, Marco took a different route. “In Italy, there’s no way to interact with other watchmakers,” he explains. “Only in the final decade of the last century did we become more informed thanks to the internet. At that point, a previously unknown path opened up. “Using his own resources, he began assembling his first workshop. “I purchased my first machine tools, including a toolroom lathe and a fairly large bench milling machine,” he says. “I began calculating, designing, and building astronomical watches on commission, then in small series, creating additional modules. I’ve made equation-of-time watches, perpetual calendars, and moon phases with simple gear trains—achieving transmission ratios that allow for errors of only three hundredths of a second per lunation.”
Today, Marco is developing a proprietary movement and recently completed a watch with a lunar equation. “The purpose of the project is to indicate the difference between the mean time and the astronomical time of the moon; a bit like the equation of solar time,” he explains. For Guarino, the AHCI provides both inspiration and community. “The Academy is a great initiative, a stimulus to improve, grow, and learn,” he says. “Mr. Calabrese and Andersen’s idea has become part of watchmaking history, and it is a great honor for me to be a candidate.”
For more information, visit the Marc & Darnò homepage.
Machiel Hulsman
Hailing from Holland, Machiel Hulsman has been an AHCI Candidate since 2022, and, like Johannes Kallinich, is already up and running with his business. Machiel rekindled his lifelong passion for mechanics and horology after a big pivot following a successful career in banking and insurance consultancy. His debut piece, the Marie-Elise, took five and a half years to complete—an entirely in-house creation right down to the rubies, with only the mainspring and hairspring sourced externally.
After immersing himself in watchmaking again, Hulsman noticed a, let’s say, open interpretation of the term in-house. “I could not live with the idea of misleading marketing,” he says, “so I decided to make everything myself: the gears, screws, the rubies, my own escapement, everything from scratch. This also gave me more freedom to design whatever types of complications and layouts I wanted.” But crafting true independence in Holland brought challenges. “Not living in Switzerland, not having the right contacts, information, tooling, and materials made it extremely hard. It took many, many years, lots of frustration and perseverance, but in the end, it was all worth the effort.”
Hulsman is currently working on several intricate projects, including a (hold your breath) three-axis tourbillon paired with a 24-hour alarm, a 12mm rotating globe, a 3D moon, jumping hours, pausing minutes at 12, and a power reserve indicator. “Next to this, I am working on my Easy Perpetual project, the easiest perpetual calendar in the world with no pushers or correctors—just quick-set the date and everything will always stay synchronized.”
For Hulsman, the AHCI provides both structure and solidarity. “There is still a lot of secrecy in the watchmaking world,” he says. “This makes it even harder to become an independent watchmaker, especially for those living outside of Switzerland, and the Academy helps. I hope we can stay focused on the artisanal side of watchmaking,” he adds, “sharing knowledge among fellow watchmakers. All of this passion—it’s the engine that drives it all.”
For more information, visit the Hulsman Timepieces homepage.
Johannes Kallinich
Based in Germany’s heart of horology, Glashütte, Kallinich Claeys is among the most business-savvy of the AHCI Candidates, exhibiting at this year’s Dubai Watch Week. I spoke with AHCI candidate and co-founder Johannes Kallinich, as he prepared for the brand’s showing in Dubai, on his vision of independence. He has quickly gained attention for pairing traditional watchmaking mastery with a forward-looking mindset.
Johannes became an AHCI Candidate in early 2025, having stayed in Glashütte following a formative career at A. Lange & Söhne, Germany’s answer to Patek Philippe. “I did my three-year apprenticeship from 2010 to 2013,” he recalls. “After that, I started working at A. Lange & Söhne on relatively simple watches, and later on, more complex pieces like the Lange 1 with its big date and power reserve indication.”
At ALS, Kallinich learned the uncompromising precision and intense craft of traditional German watchmaking. “It taught me the importance of precision and care,” he says, “but I felt the need to challenge myself further and pursued my master watchmaker certification.” Most students tweak an ETA 6498 movement with self-made components, but Kallinich went much further. “I wanted to build my own watch, so I used an ETA 6498 only as a starting point and ended up replacing everything. I made new main plates, bridges, screws, in fact, everything.”
His perfectionism led him back to Lange after completing his Master Watchmaker certification, this time in the chronograph department, where his love for complications truly took hold. “But at some point, I realized I wanted to go beyond what Lange could offer, even though it’s a wonderful place to work.”
Together with fellow Lange alumni, the Belgian watchmaker Thibault Claeys, he founded Kallinich Claeys. “Our latest project is a kind of facelift of our very first model (the Einser, German for first),” he says. “It uses the same caliber and beautiful movement, but with a redesigned dial — still connected to our origins. The goal is to showcase even more handcraft throughout: from the dial and hands to every finishing detail.”
On the AHCI’s role in nurturing future independents, Johannes is clear: “I believe the AHCI plays a vital role. It’s a platform that connects independent, artisanal watchmakers, supporting the craftsmanship behind their creations. The AHCI provides a foundation—a community built on respect for true handcraft.”
For more information, visit the Kallinich Claeys homepage.
Dann Phimphrachanh
With his debut watch, The Seconde Vive, Dann Phimphrachanh drew the attention of serious collectors and respected media outlets like Watches by SJX, and is one of this year’s new AHCI candidates. As a Portuguese watchmaker who arrived in Switzerland with little more than €1,000 and a belief in his craft, Dann spent over 11 years building his experience at Parmigiani, Greubel Forsey, Daniel Roth, and Jaeger-LeCoultre, completing a three-year evening course in 2012 to qualify as a conceptor watchmaker.
When asked what first inspired him to follow the independent path, Dann’s reply reveals a personal drive. “Watchmaking has been a growing inspiration since my first encounters with it during my apprenticeship,” he says, “and the tradition of this craft is so influential that I have always imagined myself as a creator, like all the great watchmakers who lived and breathed watchmaking in the same way as our ancestors.” That poetic spirit runs through The Seconde Vive, his debut timepiece, and for Dann, it is all about making it on his own. “Independence is the ultimate goal after years of practice and refinement, and it was clear to me that this was something I would pursue sooner or later.”
As a debut piece, The Seconde Vive has a strong identity and bodes well for Phimphrachanh’s future. “The ‘Seconde Vive’ was the result of a desire to show my peers my technical abilities, as it was important to be able to gain a certain legitimacy in their eyes,” Dann explains. “At the same time, I also wanted to be able to share with the general public a visible mechanism that anyone could understand. I hope to maintain a kind of continuity in artisanal watchmaking, even if on a small scale,” he says, adding with conviction, “above all, I believe it is important to live according to our deepest convictions, which are more important than fitting into a defined or commercially profitable framework.”
When I ask how the AHCI ensures the future of artisanal independence, Dann reflects before answering. “In my view, the AHCI is a group of passionate artisans,” he says. “While the industry is driven by strong growth, a craftsman focuses on his craft and his creations. This approach to watchmaking is above all a state of mind that motivates anyone with a flair for creativity.”
For more information, visit Dann Phimphrachanh’s Instagram profile.
Maciej Misnik
From Poland, Maciej Misnik has an unusual academic background and works mainly on pocket watches, with a 2022 F.P.Journe Young Talent Award to his name. Self-taught, his entry in the prestigious competition was a marine design pocket watch with a tourbillon and detent escapement. Unusually, he is a graduate of technical physics at the Faculty of Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics of the Gdańsk University of Technology (2014 BSc, 2021 PhD). For over 11 years, he was associated with the Gdańsk University of Technology, where he conducted numerous scientific research projects on subjects far removed from horology. “My watchmaking journey began when I was a toddler – that’s when I first disassembled a cuckoo clock,” Maciej tells me. “But seriously – watchmaking has been my passion for as long as I can remember. In 2019, after seven years, I resigned from my job at the Institute of Tele- and Radio Technology (I’m a physicist by training, and I had been working with high vacuum for just a decade). This ended my scientific career and opened my own small watchmaking workshop.”
During the summer holiday period that year, Misnik designed his first wristwatch with a very simple stopwatch complication, but due to various events, including the pandemic, my business wasn’t very profitable; in fact, it was generating losses because I didn’t have many clients.” But Maciej continued his work in his spare time after completing his PhD thesis, working on a tourbillon pocket watch. I finished the watch at the end of February, and in April, I received a prestigious award for it (the F.P.Journe award). I thought then that this could be my way of life, and so it happened. Basically, a series of coincidences.”
Maciej Misnik is currently working on several projects, including finishing a Tourbillon wristwatch for a client and building a few clocks, he tells me with a casual air that belies the manhours behind it. “I hope that at least one will be on display in Geneva in April 2026.”, he says, while musing on what impact his work can have on a younger, aspiring generation. “What impact does my work have on others? I guess time will tell. I have had a student for a summer internship once a year, so I guess I have a certain fan base among schoolchildren studying to be watchmakers.”, he says with a smile.
Maciej also sees the vital role AHCI plays in succession for the industry: “The Academy brings together independent watchmakers in one place, which, contrary to appearances, is already a lot,” Misnik says. “As an organization, despite its name, the Academy is not an educational institution, but through exhibitions and discussions at the events, it promotes traditional values in the craft. I believe this is a valuable initiative. AHCI continues to grow and accepts new candidates and members every year, so the trend is positive, and the spirit of traditional watchmaking will not be lost.”
For more information, visit Maciej Misnik’s Instagram profile.
