Mounir Moufarrige to Launch New Watch Brand

PARIS — Mounir Moufarrige, president of luxury watch firm U-Boat, will launch a new brand at the Baselworld watch and jewelry fair. Moufarrige, a luxury executive famous for reviving Montblanc and hiring Stella McCartney at Chloé, is reviving the British watch brand L. Kendall, which traces its roots back to London in 1742, making it older even than Switzerland’s Vacheron Constantin and France’s Breguet. He noted that British watchmakers were considered at the time the best in the world, before the Swiss industry rose to prominence in the 19th century. “There aren’t many English brands today on the market,” he said. “I thought: OK, time for a revival in English watchmaking.” Of course, unlike other 18th-century brands, watchmaker Larcum Kendall’s name has been dormant for centuries. And while historians consider him a first-rate craftsman, Kendall was not an inventor in the vein of Abraham-Louis Breguet. However, his creations did play a key role in some of the greatest seafaring expeditions of his era. Having been appointed a member of the Board of Longitude in 1765, Kendall was commissioned to copy watchmaker John Harrison’s model of a clock useful for navigation at sea. The marine chronometer, dubbed K1, took three years and a small fortune

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