Watchmaker Marti.

Marti Bonadurer was born in Versam in 1886. He learned the watchmaker’s craft—and brought with it an almost unknown precision to the rugged mountain village. Anyone with a broken pocket watch went to Marti. Anyone wanting to move a large grandfather clock from the parlor to the attic because it no longer worked had Marti examine it first.

In his workshop—small, dusty, with the delicate scent of machine oil and brass—he sat at a high workbench, a magnifying glass in his eye, a tiny pair of tweezers in his hand. He could ponder over a clockwork for hours.

A Life in Beats

In the year 1971, at the age of eighty-five, Marti passed away. Some of his tools have been preserved—as well as some of his clocks, which still tick today in Grisons farmhouse parlors.

His profession tells us something about the Versam Bonadurers: They were never just farmers. They were craftsmen, scribes, church founders—and watchmakers.

“A clock that runs correctly is the only machine that follows time—not one that meets it halfway.”— attributed to Marti, about his craft