Assembling a luxury timepiece has always been the watchmaker’s privilege. Maison Alcée made it the customer’s.
Founded in 2020 by Alcée Montfort, a French engineer with experience at Hermès, Cartier, and Richemont, the brand launched the Persée in 2022, the first high-end desk clock designed to be assembled entirely by its owner. Montfort’s path to founding the brand was not straightforward. Her time at Hermès gave her a deep respect for materials and manufacturing, from silk fabrics to leather tanned and gilded in gold leaf. That pursuit of craft led her first to Cartier, then Richemont, and eventually into the world of Swiss horology.
After leaving Switzerland to follow her husband to Reims, she stepped back from her career and returned to something she had carried since childhood, the instinct to make things by hand, whether as a candy maker, soap maker, or ceramist. Her ambition was to combine scientific discipline with the kind of imagination found in craftsmanship and luxury, an unusual direction for someone with her academic background. Maison Alcée was built from that instinct.
The Persée itself arrives in a finely crafted wooden box containing 233 movement components, all necessary horological tools, and an illustrated guide covering every stage of assembly, including the mechanical movement. It was designed to be enjoyed alone or shared between parent and child, as a singular experience of making something by hand.
At the TIME TO WATCHES exhibition, , running April 14 to 19, 2026, at Villa Sarasin in Geneva, the brand will unveil the Moon Phase, a new complication that existing Persée owners can add to their already-assembled clocks themselves. Adding it to an existing piece, without asking the owner to take the whole clock apart, was the central engineering challenge the team had to solve.
They resolved it by limiting the work to just two part replacements: the eight-day bush and the minute wheel and pinion. Everything else stays in place. For a brand whose entire appeal rests on the joy of putting something together, making sure that joy is not undone by a complicated disassembly process was essential.
A second challenge shaped the development. Persée owners can display their clock either standing upright or lying flat, and the Moon Phase had to work correctly in both positions. Day zero had to show a new moon in either orientation, which required building a more involved adjustment mechanism than a standard moon phase would need.
Moon phase complications have been part of watchmaking since the 17th century, originally used to track agricultural seasons and ocean tides. Their continued presence in fine watchmaking is entirely about meaning and craft, which makes them a natural fit for a brand that treats the making of a timepiece as the experience worth selling.
The complication tracks the 29.5-day lunar cycle, displayed at the bottom right of the dial. The moon phase number moves forward every day at midday and can be adjusted by hand directly on the ratchet.
Ninety-five percent of the components are made in France. The moon disk is hammered and polished on its top surface with a satin finish underneath, and every crater is shaped by hand in the workshop. The bridge carries an exclusive surface treatment the brand calls gratté, a combination of frosting and hammering that produces a sparkling, textured depth. The ratchet is engraved with the constellation of Perseus, a figure from Greek mythology and the source of the brand’s name, set against a night sky with lacquered numbers marking each lunar phase. All wheels are circle-grained by hand.
Materials include brass for the moon and wheels, 316L stainless steel for the bridge, and aluminium for the ratchet. The complication is compatible with all existing Persée versions: Azur, Nuit, Or, Douce, and Fantôme.
Maison Alcée won the Audacity Prize at the Grand Prix de l’Horlogerie de Genève in 2023. Its pieces are stocked at MB&F’s M.A.D Gallery in Geneva, Dubai, Taiwan, and Singapore, at The Hour Glass in New Zealand, and at Art in Time in Monaco. In October 2025, a limited edition Persée Fantôme produced in collaboration with Hodinkee sold out in under four hours. Only 25 pieces were made.
“We need to dispel the notion that certain crafts are inaccessible. It is only by bringing them out of the shadows that we can infuse them with new energy and enable a broader audience to see them in a new light,” Montfort said.
The Moon Phase is priced at €1,800, approximately $2,100 excluding VAT. It comes with 18 components, all necessary tools, and a booklet with assembly video links. Buyers also receive access to a private WhatsApp group with Maison Alcée’s watchmakers for support throughout the assembly process. “Taking on the role of watchmaker as you assemble this beautiful complication, handling components with simply magnificent finishings, colours and details is the ultimate horological experience. It’s an invitation to look up, too, as we did so easily as children, admire the constellations, the stars, and the moon, and realise how tiny we are,” Montfort said proudly.
