Bulgari

The Greek silversmith Sotirios Voulgaris opened his first shop in Rome in 1884; the house name is written BVLGARI in the classical Latin manner. Bulgari sold jewellery watches through the twentieth century, among them the coiled Serpenti bracelet watches of the 1940s onward. The Bvlgari-Bvlgari watch of the late 1970s, with the name engraved twice on the bezel in the style of a Roman coin, became one of its signature designs, and the company set up a watchmaking subsidiary in Neuchâtel in the early 1980s.

In 2000 Bulgari bought the Geneva brands Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth, gaining their complications expertise, and it has belonged to LVMH since 2011. Its Octo Finissimo models since 2014 have set several records for thinness.

How to recognise the work: watches are signed BVLGARI, with a V for the U in the manner of Roman inscriptions — a lettering first used in 1934 over the door of the Via Condotti shop in Rome. Serpenti watches coil round the wrist like a snake, and from the 1960s some have scales set with enamel and gems; the Bvlgari-Bvlgari has the name engraved twice around the bezel like the legend of an ancient coin.

Sotirios Voulgaris was born in 1857 at Paramythia in Epirus into a family of silversmiths from Kalarrytes, then the largest silversmithing centre in the Balkans, and opened his company in Rome in 1884. After his death in 1932 his sons Giorgio and Costantino ran the business; the first Serpenti bracelet watches appeared at the end of the 1940s, and in the 1970s shops opened in New York, Geneva, Monte Carlo and Paris.

Watch production was gathered in a Swiss subsidiary founded in 1980 and based in Neuchâtel, now Bulgari Haute Horlogerie. The purchase of Daniel Roth and Gérald Genta in 2000 gave it complicated watchmaking, and in 2011 the family exchanged its controlling stake for shares in LVMH in a deal worth €4.3 billion.