Collection: Sartory-Billard

Sartory-Billard is one of the smallest watch brands King Jewelers carries, and deliberately so. Founder Armand Billard makes at most a few hundred watches a year from a village workshop in the Moselle, on France's eastern border, and describes bespoke work not as an option but as the foundation the brand was built on. Roughly half of annual production is commissioned one watch at a time.

The remainder is the Edition collection, which is how most collectors meet the brand. The SB04-E is a 39.5mm stainless steel automatic, 10.2mm thick with a 44mm lug-to-lug span, water resistant to 100 meters and powered by the Swiss La Joux-Perret G101-series automatic with a 68-hour power reserve. What sets it apart is the dial: slabs of natural stone, cut and shaped into dials in Germany about an hour from the workshop, so that no two examples are alike.

The design language is consistent across the range. A concave bezel pulls the sapphire crystal closer to the eye and makes the case wear thinner than it measures. A 0.3mm sapphire disk, anti-reflective coated on both faces, carries diamond-cut metal indexes above the dial. The Y-shaped markers on the minute track are drawn from the Eiffel Tower, a nod to Billard's Parisian roots, and are printed in Super-LumiNova BGW9 — which also fills the outer face of the screw-down crown, so the logo glows in the dark.

A designer's side project, 2015

Armand Billard trained in classical drawing from the age of twelve, then in art and industrial design, and spent more than fifteen years designing consumer products before selling his design agency in 2015. That year he and a friend, Ludovic Sartory, built a watch largely for their own amusement. Demand followed, Sartory later stepped away, and by 2017 Billard had committed to watchmaking full time, designing the SB02, SB03 and SB04 in succession.

Bespoke first

Rather than scale into serial production, Billard built the brand around commissions. A Sartory-Billard bespoke order is a conversation with the atelier rather than a web configurator: the client chooses a base model, then case material and finish, engraving, hands, and a dial from a menu that includes stone, guilloche, mirror-finished monochrome, mother-of-pearl mosaic and tinted meteorite. Lead times run roughly four to five months for an SB04-E and eight to nine for an SB05.

The Edition tier

The SB04-E marked the brand's first move into small curated series — a more accessible entry point that keeps the bespoke philosophy intact. Stone-dial references are released in tightly limited runs; the Pietersite Platinum and Chrysocolla Platinum are each limited to 50 pieces.

Working with specialists

For a workshop this size, partnerships matter. Movements come from La Joux-Perret in Switzerland. Dial work is done with Comblemine, the Swiss dial maker known for its work with leading independents. The SB05's case and rotor come from Cattin, the casemaker owned by Kari Voutilainen. Typography for the SB10 and the Nuances numerals was drawn for the brand by Simon Schmidt. In 2024 Billard co-founded Horocraft in Sainte-Croix, Switzerland, with Sylvain Pinaud and Christophe Beuchat, to bring movement manufacturing in house.

Recognition

The brand's SB06-24HM "La Nuit" flying tourbillon was a finalist in the Tourbillon category at the 2024 Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve. Sartory-Billard has been covered by Hodinkee, Fratello, Watchonista, Quill & Pad, aBlogtoWatch, Worn & Wound and Phillips, and works through a network of eighteen authorized retailers worldwide.

SB04-E — The 39.5mm automatic at the heart of the collection. Stainless steel, 10.2mm thick, 100 meters water resistant, Swiss La Joux-Perret G101-series automatic with a 68-hour power reserve. Offered with stone dials, guilloche and monochrome finishes, on rubber, leather or a quick-release steel bracelet.

SB04-E Nuances — The permanent, non-stone line, launched in 2026. A concave sunray dial with a fume gradient and applied numerals, in navy blue, red and green, each paired with a colour-matched rubber strap.

SB10 Jumping Hour — A 39.5mm watch with no conventional dial: a stone cabochon becomes the face, with a jumping hour aperture and minutes on a rotating sapphire disc. La Joux-Perret G101A with a patented jumping-hour module, 55-hour power reserve.

SB05 — The bespoke-only dress reference, 38.5mm and 8.5mm thick, driven by a manually wound La Joux-Perret 7380 with a 90-hour power reserve, cased by Cattin.

Every Sartory-Billard watch is covered by a two-year international manufacturer's warranty against manufacturing defects, excluding theft or loss, accidental damage, normal wear and unauthorized intervention. Because Sartory-Billard produces only a few hundred watches a year, buying from an authorized retailer is the only way to be certain a watch is genuine, correctly specified and eligible for that coverage. King Jewelers is an authorized Sartory-Billard retailer, listed on the brand's own retailer network, and has served Nashville since 1912 — with watchmakers on site for sizing, service and warranty support.