Benzinger

Jochen Benzinger (born 1961) began his professional training in 1978 at the Pforzheim Goldsmiths' School, where he became captivated by the ancient craft of guilloché. After completing his master certification with distinction, he founded his own workshop in 1984, initially serving the local jewelry industry. His breakthrough into watchmaking came when Gerd-Rüdiger Lang of Chronoswiss commissioned him for hand-guilloché dials, marking the first time his name appeared on a watch dial. Over the decades, as Pforzheim's watch and jewelry sector declined from 30,000 workers to approximately 2,000, Benzinger acquired liquidated antique machines and tooling from closing workshops. Today he operates around 20 different machines, many over a century old. He has created dials and decorative work for IWC, Chronoswiss, Glashütte Original, Moritz Grossmann, and Fabergé's Imperial eggs. Rolls-Royce enlisted him for dashboard clocks in the eighth-generation Phantom. In 2017, he partnered with Markus Grieb to form Grieb & Benzinger for high-complication pieces, and later launched his own manufacture calibre, the GAP 1, developed with Austrian watchmaker Habring.