Corum Watches

About Corum

Right from the beginning, Corum distinguished itself from other watch makers with original design. This has not changed since the company’s first appearance more than fifty years ago. In 1955, as the company was established in La Chaux-de-Fonds, located in the Swiss Jura region, the gifted watchmaker Gaston Ries and his nephew Rene Bannwart transformed this small, private-label company into a watch manufacture featuring its own brand: Corum.

A scant one year later in 1956, the young watch manufacture presented its first Corum watches to the public. All of the models were excitingly original, garnering immediate and intense attention, and the foundation was laid for the company’s reputation as a trendsetter among watch brands. Delicate watch movements enclosed in artfully sliced and hollowed gold coins or literally encased between completely transparent sapphire crystal plates were the specialty of creative minds. Rising watchmakers and designers with a will to excel could not avoid at least one stint with Corum. Creations of iconic importance such as the watches of the Admiral’s Cup line were achieved, a series that has long represented the public image of Corum with nautical flags in place of numerals.

The new Admiral’s Cup Tides 48 is the successor model to the tide watch Marees, first introduced in 1992. The three individual mechanisms that make up the tide movement are the result of a development period that took place from about 1988 to 1991 in cooperation with the Geneva Observatory and the French navy’s hydrographic and oceanographic service (SHOM) in Brest where a difference in water level of more than eight meters between ebb and tide can be observed – and where a tide watch is a particularly practical accessory.

The new Admiral’s Cup Tides 48 runs on an ETA automatic movement outfitted with tide module CO 277, which was developed fifteen years ago exclusively for Corum by Dubois Depraz, Switzerland’s largest supplier of specialty modules for movements.

Even though the case became clearly bigger, the weight of the watch has remained almost the same since the company chose a light, though very robust and corrosion-proof material in titanium for the case and clasp. Combined with vulcanized rubber for the strap and as a coating for the bezel and crown protection, this timepiece is as comfortable as it is attractive. In January 2000, forty-five years after the brand’s founding, Severin Wunderman took over Corum, and since that day the brand has experienced a fresh period of growth. The experienced and renowned watch business professional (Wunderman developed and produced Gucci’s phenomenally successful watches) reflected on the roots of the family business and brought his son Michael on board, who now assumes more and more of the responsibility at Corum.

Since 2004, Michael Wunderman has been the company’s managing director. While introducing his own individual style, he continues, in the best Corum tradition, to emphasize the special features and unusual slant for which the company has long stood.