Alain Silberstein

Alain Silberstein was born in 1950. He has stated in an interview that he was born in Paris; no exact birth date is documented in public sources. He trained in Paris in interior architecture and design at a school that followed a Bauhaus-based curriculum, a background he has described in interviews as the direct source of his later watch aesthetics: geometry, color theory, and architectural composition. Sources differ on the precise name of the institution, citing either the Ecole des arts graphiques de Paris, associated with the Met de Penninghen teaching tradition, or the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Appliques et des Metiers d'Art, with a degree in interior and model design completed around 1973.

After working as an interior architect, Silberstein turned to watchmaking and presented his first watch at the Basel exhibition in 1987. In 1990 he founded his eponymous brand in Besancon, France, with his wife Sylvie, producing models such as the Krono Bauhaus, Krono Tourbillon, and Kronosaphir, built around bold primary colors, circles, triangles, and squares, and playful details including a smiley-face day indicator. The brand paused regular production around 2012. Since then Silberstein has worked mainly through collaborations, including the Bauhaus HM2.2 Black "Performance Art" watch with MB&F in 2009 and, from 2019, a series of projects with Louis Erard, among them Le Regulateur. In 2023 he announced plans to relaunch his own brand, and his official site has described a coming collection tied to the brand's fortieth anniversary. He remains active and appeared as a speaker at the "24h du temps" conference in Besancon in 2025. His name sometimes appears in auction records rendered in full capitals as "ALAIN SILBERSTEIN"; no other artist of the same name is documented as active in the auction market.

Watch-industry writers consistently frame Silberstein as a disruptive figure who rejected the conservative visual codes of Swiss watchmaking in favor of primary colors, geometric dials, and an overtly Bauhaus-influenced design language. Hodinkee has profiled him as a "design iconoclast" who "would not be put in a box," and Europa Star has referred to him as a "watchmaking architect" and a founder of "new watchmaking," language that trade coverage has extended into calling him one of the founding figures of "nouvelle horlogerie" even after his own brand went quiet. His later collaborations with MB&F and Louis Erard have been covered as evidence that his design vocabulary still resonates with a newer generation of collectors, though most of this coverage comes from specialist watch press rather than mainstream art or design critics.

Silberstein's market runs through specialist watch channels rather than the fine-art auction system. The best-documented public auction result is the Marine Tourbillon "Black Sea" (Ref. MTT2-004N), a titanium tourbillon wristwatch numbered 1 of 9, which sold for HKD 882,000 (about USD 113,000) at Phillips, The Hong Kong Watch Auction: XII, on 29 November 2020. A single magazine report describes a higher price, EUR 125,800, for a "Pere Noel" model at a Geneva sale, but that report does not name the auction house or give an exact date, so it is noted here only as an unverified figure rather than a confirmed record. Recent collector attention has concentrated on his post-2012 collaborations, particularly the Louis Erard partnership: Le Regulateur, released in 2019, won a Red Dot Award for Product Design in 2021.

There is no catalogue raisonne and no formal authentication program for Silberstein's work; verification for vintage pieces runs through his own archive, specialist dealers, and auction-house watch departments. The best-documented public auction price, HKD 882,000 for the Marine Tourbillon "Black Sea" at Phillips Hong Kong in 2020, should be treated as one data point rather than a stable benchmark, since other reported higher prices are not consistently corroborated across sources. His current commercial visibility comes largely from branded collaborations, such as the Louis Erard partnership, rather than from his own original 1990s production, and he has publicly signaled plans to relaunch his own brand, which could reshape both supply and pricing going forward. Collectors should also expect to see his work catalogued inconsistently, sometimes as "Alain Silberstein" and sometimes rendered in full capitals as "ALAIN SILBERSTEIN" in auction-house listings.