Profile
Rossella Baldi and
Alice Christian
This installment in our series Women in Horology will take a parallel path to what we normally do. Instead of focusing on one important female character from our niche world, we’re going to discover the stories of two of them. The first is contemporary to us and studied the history and career of the second. We’re also going to be dipping our toes into the fascinating subjects of history, research, and of the many faces of the Swiss watch industry which you might not yet be familiar with. Because there is a whole side of Swiss watchmaking which few people talk about or have an interest in, even though it permeates all aspects of our hobby and industry from global standpoints. Moreover, the topics of research and history are particularly close to my heart because I graduated as an art historian and archeologist and thus I like to understand the whys and hows of things, whether it be why a field watch looks the way it does or how one revives a defunct watch brand. So even though the topics of today’s installment will be varied and wide, we will nevertheless focus on the crucial idea that women play, and have always played, a key role in the watch world.
The first individual we’re going to talk about is Rossella Baldi, a Swiss researcher and historian who heralds from the Italian region of the country and whose specialty is 18th and 19th centuries horology. Rossella is the first researcher and historian I’ve spoken to about watches and it feels even more special that Rossella is a she and not a him, for a reason you might already suspect but which we will certainly get back to at some point in this article. The second individual we’re going to talk about is Alice Christian, a Swiss entrepreneur born in the 1890s who held the title of Director of the Benrus La Chaux-de-Fonds branch for no less than three decades. What we know about her is thanks to the tedious research work Rossella has embarked on in the past year, and though we don’t know everything there is to know about Alice Christian and that not all of what we will go over can be 100% verified as being true, we will nevertheless get a pretty holistic picture of one of the first female leader of the Swiss watch industry. But not the first. Indeed, women have been running watch companies from as early as the 18th century but this fact is unknown to most as it was meant to be.
Rossella Baldi; photo credit: www.letemps.ch
Who Is Rossella Baldi
When I spoke to Rossella about her career and background I felt as if I was finally speaking to a peer. Even though there are many, many people today who speak about horology and Swiss brands and the fascinating history of Swiss watchmaking, the fact to the matter is that most never bother scratching deeper than the surface and repeat whatever well-known facts have been already spread out in all types of media channels throughout the world ad nauseam. Rarely do people actually create new original content and so it was really, really nice to speak to Rossella not only about her profession but also what she’s learned about Alice Christian and the inner workings of the Swiss watch industry in the past many years. As we know, Rossella was born in the Italian side of Switzerland and did most of her studies in Neuchâtel where she moved to become an anthropologist but where she ended up with a Master in Art History. After completing her master’s thesis, she participated in a nationwide research project on the Jaquet-Droz family, the famous 18th-century La Chaux-de-Fonds watchmakers and clockmakers who are primarily known for their automatons — mechanically automated dolls.
Photo credit: The automatons of Jaquet-Droz, circa 1760-1770 © Musée d’art et d’histoire, Neuchâtel.
But since Jacquet Droz was also an accomplished watchmaker who dealt in haute horlogerie and métiers d’art timekeeping devices, Rossella thus fell into horology. Another factor that led her to join our niche industry was that she started dating a talented Swedish independent watchmaker who made tourbillons for Girard-Perregaux. During the Jaquet-Droz research project, she also joined a second project dedicated to the Neuchâtel Observatory. After these projects ended, she moved to Paris to continue her PhD research, staying for two years before moving back to Switzerland. There, she was appointed Associate Curator at the Musée international d’horlogerie de La Chaux-de-Fonds and head of the museum’s research centre. She worked there for a few years, but longed to return to research, which she did. During the following years, she worked on various research projects in horology for collectors, institutions and brands, whilst also researching the history of travel, natural history and libraries. In horology, she specialised in 18th-century watchmaking — which she refers to as “her century” — because it saw the birth of many important innovations in the industry, such as chronometry.
She then further expanded her field of interest to the 19th century and eventually the 20th century, even though the latter is less fascinating to study as most of the important discoveries and new technologies in watchmaking were indeed born during the previous two centuries. As a freelancer, what Rossella works on now depends on the needs of her numerous clients, because as we’re about to see through her discovery of the life and career of Alice Christian, and through other projects she’s worked on, is that many brands which are now being revived—which is a trend that doesn’t seem to be losing steam—hire Rossella to find historical nuggets about the their past in order to have a good story to tell. And this happens whatever the brand is and by whomever it was resuscitated which doesn’t surprise me one bit. Throughout the interview, it was made clear that the work Rossella does is rather unique and crucially important to shed some light on the state of the Swiss watch industry, where it comes from and where it’s headed, and not all of what she uncovers turns out to be a bad thing, quite the contrary, even though sometimes it is quite purely silly. But we will get back to all of this in a minute, I promise.
Photo credit: Ferdinand Berthoud, excerpts from his « Journal of experiences, N° 8. 1ere partye », 1765 © Conservatoire national des arts et des métiers, Paris.
Photo credit: Henri Grandjean & Co., Le Locle, Watch in gold, enamel and diamonds, circa 1870 ; gifted to king Edouard VII by Mahendra Singh, maharaja of Patiala © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2026 | Royal Collection Trust (RCIN 11478).
Rossella's Crucial Work in the Industry
As a freelancer, the scope of Rossella’s work has widened a lot which brought her to collaborate with many brands and various actors in the industry. As mentioned earlier, she gets commissioned work by those who resuscitate brands as those who purchase the name and/or rights to their archives, stocks, and patents, whenever that is the case, want not only to understand what they’re getting themselves into but also know how to best present and market their new acquisition. As she pointed out, many young and microbrands—because the latter is how we can define someone who bought the rights to a name—are not in tune with their own history and solicit Rossella’s help and expertise in order to fill in the gaps. Moreover, she’s also hired by those who sell the names and rights to historical brands so that they have a better grasp of what they’re selling and how much they could be selling it back for. In some cases, like people trade stocks and currencies, some investors trade in watch brands and buy them in order to resell them at higher prices. This practice seems to be quite widespread in the Swiss watch industry and most certainly in other countries too.
So I was curious to understand exactly how Rossella works with brands and brand owners and when, and why, they contact her. How much information she digs up depends on the client, how much time and money they want to invest in the process, and what they’re looking for. Sometimes all they want to know are general facts so that they can eloquently speak about their new acquisition to experts and consumers. Some other times they want her to go deep and that is where Rossella strives as it makes it possible for her to study all aspects of a brand’s history and its connections to the industry as a whole. The more she learns about the global Swiss watchmaking industry the more helpful she can be to the brands as she can make unique connections others can’t. For most of her projects she goes data mining, as she explained, researching for example, the date at which a brand was founded and by whom and where, specific aspects of a brand’s history and of the family who ran it (as most people are not versed in historical dates and events) and who the brand is linked to. She provides copies of the documents she finds and advises on how to use and communicate about their content.
Photo credit: « Floral Clock », in Dictionnaire pittoresque d’histoire naturelle (Paris, 1836), vol. 4, pl. 281, collection privée.
Whenever she embarks on a new research project, she explains from the get-go that a part of the information she will find is open access and in public registries which means that anyone can consult it any time. But in other instances, that is not the case especially for brands founded in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. However easy or difficult it is to find the data, Rossella reserves the right to hold onto the information as it will most likely benefit another one of her clients. She made the strategic choice to not work for a single brand as it makes it possible for her to make the unique connections which makes all of her clients stand to gain something from her freelancer status. What most brands look for in the end are historical nuggets they use in marketing campaigns, as many ask her to do the impossible to create impossible connections between those who run the brand now and those who did two centuries ago. Even though some of her clients can indeed claim a real connection to the original founder(s), some others can’t. But they strive to find, for example, a distant relative who was somehow connected to the Swiss watch industry at some point in the past.
Photo credit: Women working for Benrus in La-Chaux-de-Fonds, years 1950-1960 © DAV, Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de-Fonds, Fonds Ferdinand Perret.
Making Her Way to Alice Christian
There are many legends but few known facts which circulate in the watch industry and most of what pertains to women was purposely not recorded. Women have held many roles in watchmaking in the past centuries, not only as watchmakers, blue-collar workers, and secretaries, but also in positions of leadership. When the current owners of Benrus heard that a woman might have managed the brand whilst the three founding brothers were still around—Benjamin, Oscar, and Ralph Lazarus—and thought she was the very first female brand director, they contacted Rossella to do an initial inquiry into the matter. She could confirm right away that yes indeed a woman led the Swiss Benrus branch and that her name was Alice Christian which unfortunately didn’t ring a bell to today’s Benrus. They were equally surprised to hear that Alice Christian was not the first woman to have held such a title in the Swiss watch industry because indeed these facts were concealed in official documents. After this initial discovery, Rossella made a proposal to Benrus to go in a deeper chase and study of Alice Christian and this led her to unearth tidbits of information here and there and to slowly put some of the pieces of this complex puzzle together.
Rossella first learned that Alice Christian died in 1979 because she found the official announcement of her death in local newspapers and partial information from organizations which thanked Alice Christian posthumously for her support. People lived quite old back then already and Rossella deduced that Alice (to keep things short) must have become CEO of Benrus in her early 30’s which would place her birth date around 1890-1900. However, Rossella wasn’t able to consult birth registries for these years so she had to continue with her investigative work. What was easy to find is that Benrus was founded in 1921 and that Alice became CEO in 1927 as Rossella discovered legal documents issued in New York City which attest to this information, which does mean indeed that she was made head of Benrus only six short years after that the brand was founded. Rossella imagines this was made so because Alice, as we will see later, spoke perfect English and had a strong track-record of working in the Swiss watchmaking industry. As you might know, even though Benrus was created in New York City, its watches were made in Switzerland.
Photo credit: Alice Christian, given power-of-attorney for Benrus in 1927 © Archives de l’État de Neuchâtel, Fonds Registre du commerce (Pièces justificatives).
Photo credit: Hofmann & Viala, Pforzheim, Pocket watch, end of 18th century © Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim.
Rossella was particularly interested in studying the life and career of Alice because she wanted to show that women have held positions of power in the watch industry for a long time even though, as I pointed out earlier, this fact is rarely known. And it was meant to be so as most traces of powerful women in watchmaking were purposely not recorded in official and archival documents, and that almost none of the names of women who co-run Swiss brands as early as the 18th century were printed on watch dials. Alice in fact was an early feminist who was involved in women's right to gain the right to vote, amongst other things, and she was so dedicated to her work and advocacy life that she didn’t create a family of her own—which made finding out more information about her the more difficult. Eventually, Rossella was able to find out that Alice created her first watch business in 1920, that she was born in 1891 in Le Locle, an information she uncovered by studying census data of that region. With these first pieces of information, Rossella Rossella agreed to discuss Alice Christian in Le Temps newspaper, hoping that someone who knew or was related to Alice would read it and contact Rossella.
Photo credit: Alice Christian in the 1950s, private collection.
The Life and Career of Alice
By pure luck or serendipity, a relative of Alice Christian read the story and contacted Rossella. The person in question was a close descendant of Alice who was adopted by someone in Alice’s family (and whose identity will remain a mystery to us) and referred to her as “Aunt Alice.” Through this connection which is ongoing, and through the additional in-depth research Rossella she has been able to assemble more pieces of the puzzle which is what we’re about to discuss now. Though keep in mind that some of what follows is speculative, it could make sense. And so we’re about to dig a little deeper not only in Alice’s fascinating personal life but also her successful career in the Swiss watch industry. Alice came from a large family of Prussian furniture makers who immigrated to Switzerland before the unification of German states in 1871. She had between eight to nine siblings, one of whom was another key figure of the Swiss watchmaking industry. Her brother, Georges Christian, moved to Basel looking for better opportunities and ended up co-founding Oris which rapidly grew into a major company which employed 350 employees when he passed away in 1927.
Alice Christian founded her first watchmaking business in 1920, in partnership with her brother-in-law, Marcel Aerni. The company supplied watch parts to other companies well known in the industry. Georges Christian and Jules Russbach also became involved in the business. These two watchmakers were connected to a type of watch that Switzerland does not like to talk about much: cheap fashion watches called “à la Roskopf”. Roskopf was a 19th-century watchmaker who specialized in simple, rudimentary, and reliable pocket watches for blue-collar workers. Following his death, many Swiss industrialists realized that there was money to be made from producing reliable watches at a fairly low price. Moreover, over the following decades, Alice founded or took over various watch businesses. For example, in 1942, she purchased a Jura watch company and transformed it to solely become a subcontractor. She was definitely successful in business, which helps shed some light on her personality. While high-end horology seemed inaccessible to female managers, Alice found her way through the less expensive market segment and became a millionaire.
Photo credit: Women working for Benrus in La-Chaux-de-Fonds, years 1950-1960 © DAV, Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de-Fonds, Fonds Ferdinand Perret.
Photo credit: Charles Lindbergh's plane welcomed by a crowd at Croydon Field, England, 29 may 1927 © Corbis Corb, National Geographic.
Alice’s fluency in English is another reason why she was hired to run Benrus’ branch in Switzerland. According to a family legend, Alice was sitting in a coffee shop one fateful day where the three brothers were having a drink when they heard her speak English. They overheard her speak the language so fluently that they stroke-up a conversation with her, and discovered that Alice was well-connected and experienced in the watchmaking industry, which led them to hire her. On a personal level, Alice was an advocate for women's rights, but she was also heavily invested in protecting social groups such as prostitutes and children and had strong bonds with the Jewish community — the Lazarus brothers were Jewish. Upon her death, she donated money to support various organisations. As a feminist who didn’t have a family of her own and fought for civil rights, Alice wasn’t always well regarded by her family, who believed that a woman’s legitimate place in society was to run the household, not businesses. As a final protest, Alice cut those who disapproved of her out of her inheritance.
Alice used her money to travel the world alone multiple times, living a free life as she intended. And she did so even before that she created a successful life for herself which is even more rare and impressive for a woman to have done in the early 20th century. Rossella found out that Alice wasn’t in the census of Le Locle between 1914-1918 which would indicate she didn’t live there during that time period. Because Rossella couldn’t find a request for a passport, she imagined that Alice moved to Basel to work with her brother Georges during World War I . But through her descendant, Rossella learned that in fact, Alice lived in London and worked as an au-pair and might have gotten stuck there at the onset of the war. Digging deeper still, Rossella discovered that certain countries like the United Kingdom had special partnerships with Switzerland which made it possible for Alice to travel there without a passport. Even though some of this is speculative, it would explain why Alice could speak perfect English and why the first passport she was issued dates to 1927 only, when she was hired to run Benrus for the Lazarus brothers.
Photo credit: Registration with Neuchâtel bureau of commerce of Aerni et Cie, Fabrique centrale, the first company founded by Alice Christian, 1920 © Archives de l’État de Neuchâtel, Fonds Registre du commerce (Pièces justificatives).
Conclusion: Circling Black to Rossella
Whether you got into horology 150 years ago or today, and despite some progress the industry has made being more friendly and welcoming to women, globally, watchmaking remains dominated by men. In all of the work Rossella has done with various watch brands in the past few years, she has yet to meet another woman who does the same work she does, or even to have a female client. Most of the people she deals with are white alpha males aged 40 and above who dress, talk, and walk in specific ways which I also identified as being true in my own experience of the industry. Which is why, amongst the many research projects Rossella has completed and is currently working on, this one on Alice Christian is particularly important to her and hits home, and thus she’s continued to work to unearth as much information about Alice as she can, working alongside her descendant, and she plans on expending the reach of her research project to other women who have played key roles in the Swiss watch industry but whose legacy has been purposely concealed. So please follow Rossella’s work as she continues her investigative work about the life and career of Alice.
Thanks for reading.