DITTA DAVIDE BISSO E FIGLIO GENESIO
OVER 250 YEARS OF DESIGN AND ENGINEERING
The “Time Valley”
North West of Italy, along the coast of the Ligurian Riviera, a small area nicknamed the “Time Valley”, renowned for his artisan instruments to measure hours and minutes of our life.
Located half way between Genoa, a main maritime hub, and Portofino, a pearl of Mediterranean luxury lifestyle, the Time Valley developed its own industry in the past centuries, supporting the increasing demand for machineries and mechanical tools.
The beginning of mechanical production
In this scenario, since 1758 in Uscio, a small village in the mountains behind Genoa, populated since Roman age as a trading pass on the way from the Ligurian coast to the hinterland of North Italy, Bisso family worked and manufactured metals to create tools and machineries.
Started
with the aim to support the well-established bell production already present in
the neighboring village, as well as the local agricultural needs, the
manufacturing skills improved quickly and more and more complicate machineries were made available to satisfy the more demanding requests
of nearby bigger towns, in particular tower clocks.
XIX Century: the golden era of tower clocks
In a few years Bisso clocks were well known and installed on many bell towers along the Ligurian Riviera.
Davide Bisso was the man who ran the family business from an artisan workshop to a modern factory of the XIX century. In 1879 he was elected Major. Proud of this achievements, he expressed his gratitude giving his village a huge tower clock, that worked flawlessly for ninety years, and now it is exposed at the Clock’s Museum.
XX
Century: new opportunities and new challenges
Genesio Bisso started to work very young with his father, Davide Bisso, building clocks. Nevertheless, he was a modern and eclectic designer, and looked forward to the new technologies available at the beginning of the XX Century such as cars and motor bikes. The fascinating fully hand-made clocks, expression of the best technology of the past century, were at their swan song and Genesio Bisso understood that the consolidated know-how of the family in mechanical production should expand to different fields to be competitive.
In 1905 he went to Turin to get one of the first driver licenses in Italy, which was for many years the oldest valid Italian license until his death at 96, in 1972.
He
founded with a firm one of the first public transport companies of Genoa
hinterland, run for a few years and connecting local villages to main towns by means of modern vehicles that replaced the ones
pulled by animals until that time.
For about 60 years he ran the traditional clocks production together with automotive, marine and entertainment services, providing one the first cinema in the area.
The drama of
WWII affected people as well as business. Genesio was
in his 70s and it was too late to think big again, then he run again a small
workshop dealing mainly with the emerging automotive expansion, while
mechanical clocks were less and less requested.
Anyway, he never forgot the beginning of his career and in the 60’s, when he was ninety years old, he started to produce the first prototypes of smaller clocks for home and personal purpose. Meanwhile, the members of his family further developed their knowledge in marine field as officers and shipowners.
Nowadays
the heritage of this technology is well known and appreciated also in marine
engineering field.
The 2000s and the new products
As a result of this heritage, a new line of products has been developed to celebrate two and a half centuries of our technology and the result is our range of automatic complication watches created with the best technology available in the international market.
To achieve the best quality the components of this watch are Swiss made and assembled in Italy.
