Môtiers, Finland and Switzerland · born 1962
Kari Voutilainen
VerifiedHand finishing, restoration and complicated watches
Life & work
Kari Voutilainen trained in Finland and Switzerland, worked in restoration and teaching, and established a workshop making watches with hand-finished movements and in-house dials and cases.
His work is associated with decimal repeaters, chronometry and a high standard of visible hand finishing.
Training, contributions & innovations
- Independent manufacture with in-house dial, case and movement finishing
- Restoration and teaching experience carried into new work
Inventions & patents
- No broad invention claim is asserted; significance rests on execution and on documented restoration work.
Signatures & markings on surviving work
- Signed and numbered watches, individually documented by the workshop.
Collecting significance
Signatures on historic work were applied by retailers and by later hands as well as by makers, so attribution should rest on the movement's construction and on documented provenance rather than on the name alone. A specialist opinion is worth obtaining before any purchase made on the strength of a signature.
Related photographs
No confidently matched photograph of this subject has been found yet. These photographs show a closely related record, and are not examples of the type described on this page.
Sources & references
- Britten, F. J., Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers
- Loomes, B., reference works on British and European clockmakers (edition-dependent)
- Museum catalogue entries for signed examples
Where sources disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved silently.