Andreas Strehler

Strehler was born in 1971 in Winterthur, Switzerland. He trained as a watchmaker through a four-year apprenticeship in Frauenfeld from 1987 to 1991, studying concurrently at the Watchmakers School in Solothurn, and graduated with a Swiss Federal Diploma as Watchmaker-Rhabilleur in 1991.

After training and prototype work at Renaud et Papi through the mid-1990s, he opened his own workshop in Winterthur in 1995 and became an independent watchmaker. He joined the AHCI, the invitation-only Academie Horlogere des Createurs Independants, and in 2005 he founded UhrTeil AG, an engineering and micromechanics firm, and moved his atelier to Sirnach, Switzerland, where he continues to work.

Alongside watches sold under his own name, Strehler has designed movements for other houses, including the perpetual calendar movement in the H. Moser and Cie. Perpetual 1, which won the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Geneve for Best Complication in 2006, and a movement used in the Harry Winston Opus 7 in 2007. His own Sauterelle a Lune Perpetuelle earned a Guinness World Records title for the most precise moon phase wristwatch, a distinction later surpassed by IWC's Portugieser Eternal Calendar; sources vary on the exact year of the record and the precise margin, citing roughly one day of deviation over more than two million years. In 2013 he received the Prix Gaia from the Musee International d'Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds, awarded in the Artisanat-Creation category for his technical and artistic creations and ingenious, minimalistic mechanical movements. In 2023 he launched a more accessible consumer brand, STREHLER, beginning with the Sirna, and followed it with the Santis World Time in 2026. He remains an active, living watchmaker based in Sirnach.

Recognition for Strehler has come chiefly from within the watchmaking world rather than from art or auction critics. The Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie's encyclopedia entry frames him as a watchmaker who follows his own direction rather than working at industrial scale. His 2013 Prix Gaia, awarded in the Artisanat-Creation category for his technical and artistic creations and ingenious, minimalistic mechanical movements, is treated within specialist watch media as one of independent watchmaking's most significant honors. His standing was reinforced in 2018 when the Horological Society of New York invited him to lecture on tradition and innovation in watchmaking, a rare institutional platform for an independent maker.

Strehler's market runs mostly outside the auction room. New pieces are sold directly through his own companies, Andreas Strehler and STREHLER, and through a small number of specialist retailers, with recent models such as the STREHLER Santis World Time priced at roughly CHF 24,750 at retail. The highest documented auction price for a Strehler wristwatch is CHF 114,300, achieved at Phillips for the Papillon d'Or; the exact sale date and location are not specified in the public summary, and no higher confirmed auction result could be found as of this writing.

Strehler's output is small and unhurried, and there is no catalogue raisonne; verification runs through his own companies and his AHCI membership rather than a third-party certificate program. Public auction data is thin, with a single well-documented result, CHF 114,300 at Phillips, so that one sale should not be read as a stable price benchmark. Most transactions happen directly with the atelier or through specialist retailers rather than at auction, which means provenance and direct contact with the maker's own companies matter more than they would for an artist with a deep secondary market.