Atelier Craig restores mechanical watches, and nothing else. This page tells you who works at the bench and how the work is done.
From Australia to Paris
Nicolas Craig trained in Australia: a four-year apprenticeship under a master jeweller and watchmaker, then five years on his own account, making bespoke jewellery, repairing, and already working on watches. He moved to France in 2025. Today, in Paris, he does what drew him from the start: the complete restoration of vintage watches and pocket watches, using traditional techniques.
The workshop receives visitors by appointment only. Each watch stays for several weeks: the time that entirely handmade work demands.
The method, step by step
- Diagnosis. Examination under the loupe; the case is opened if this presents no risk. You receive a precise assessment: what must be restored, what deserves to be preserved, what can wait.
- Quotation. Drawn up after opening, line by line. Nothing is undertaken without your agreement.
- Complete disassembly. The movement is fully taken apart, mainspring barrel included, and every component passes under the loupe.
- Restoration. Machine cleaning, replacement of worn parts. When a part can no longer be found, it is remade at the bench: a staff, a stem, a spring, sometimes a case element.
- Reassembly and regulation. Lubrication with modern oils, regulation on the timegrapher in several positions.
- Testing. The watch runs for several days at the workshop before being returned or offered for sale. The timing report measured on the timegrapher is supplied with it.
Repairs are photographed as the work progresses. These images bear witness to what was done under the loupe, and join the file handed over with the watch.
The tools
Watchmaker’s lathe, jewelling press, cleaning machine, timegrapher, crystal press, polishing equipment. The workshop is equipped to make parts, which makes it possible to restore calibres for which no supplies exist any more.
A jeweller by training, a watchmaker by passion
Nicolas is also a trained manufacturing jeweller: five years making bespoke pieces. The workshop does not offer jewellery work, but this training changes the result on watches. Cases, crowns, links and clasps are remade and repolished at the bench, preserving the original edges, where most workshops subcontract this work.