The Rudis Sylva brand was founded by Jacky Epitaux in Les Bois village in the district of Franches-Montagnes in the Jura Mountains. This region did not have its own watch brands, but many great watchmakers came from there and started their own companies developing original wristwatches. To honor the local watchmaking tradition, Jacky Epitaux decided to name his brand “Rudis Sylva”, which was derived from the name of one brave adventurer Jean Ruedin who settled the first villages in the heavily forested region of Franches-Montagnes, and “Sylva”, Latin for “forest”

When in 2006 Jacky Epitaux decided to start a new brand, the main question was: should he create complications based on existing calibers or should he develop his own movements instead? Epitaux chose the second option because he wanted to create something truly exceptional from the very beginning, although it was a hundred times more expensive. 

In 2007, the brand presented the double-balance Harmonious Oscillator movement, which took 5 years to develop and which is considered as significant as the invention of the tourbillon by Abraham-Louis Breguet. The movement was designed and made entirely from scratch. As Epitaux notes, this unusual tourbillon with two balance wheels and one escapement completely eliminates the effects of gravity and greatly increases accuracy.

Rudis Sylva has been making the Harmonious Oscillator for ten years now and this model opened a great new chapter in the history of watchmaking.

The premiere of the Harmonious Oscillator watch took place at Baselworld-2009 and aroused the interest of many well-known watchmakers, who believe that this invention is comparable in importance to the tourbillon. And just like Breguet's invention, it takes time for people to appreciate its significance. 

When Breguet developed the first anti-gravity device in history, he decided to install the escapement inside a mobile carriage that performed a complete rotation every minute, protecting the regulating organ from the negative effect of gravity. Rudis Sylva created his own oscillator which is fairly unique in its architecture and much more effective than the tourbillon, because while the tourbillon requires a complete revolution to negate the effect of gravity, the Harmonious Oscillator enables instantaneous time correction, offered by a complex technical solution, so it is never influenced by the Earth’s gravity. 

The Harmonious Oscillator concept developed by Romain Gillet and Mika Rassinen involves a single escapement with two completely interconnected balance wheels which are housed in a cage that rotates once per minute. These balances rotate in opposite directions and each hairspring breathes in an opposite way, thus, the energy of the balance springs is constantly opposed, enabling instantaneous average correction, which eliminates the effect of gravity. 

With its huge rotating cage with a diameter of 17.4 mm incorporating a double balance wheel, the tourbillon by Rudis Sylva looks quite impressive, and it’s all the result of meticulous manual work. 

Rudis Sylva has been making the Harmonious Oscillator for ten years now and this model opened a great new chapter in the history of watchmaking. All the owners of Sylva’s watches enjoy the fact that they acquire a unique and extremely rare mechanism because within ten years the brand has produced no more than 100 such pieces.