John Arnold (1736-1799) was a London-based watchmaker who became one of the founding figures of marine chronometry. He opened his London workshop in 1764 and through the 1770s and 1780s developed detent-escapement pocket chronometers with cylindrical-helical balance springs. His son John Roger Arnold joined the firm, renaming it "Arnold & Son," and the atelier became one of the principal suppliers of chronometers to the British Admiralty. In 1808, Abraham-Louis Breguet delivered Breguet No. 169, the earliest surviving wristwatch-precursor tourbillon, to John Roger Arnold in London. It remains the only tourbillon Breguet ever made for a rival watchmaker.
The original Arnold & Son firm closed in the 19th century. The modern brand was relaunched in 1995 in Switzerland as a rebirth of the Arnold name. Since 2012 it has been owned by the Citizen Group through its Swiss movement subsidiary La Joux-Perret, which is based in La Chaux-de-Fonds and produces both the Arnold & Son calibres and supplies other brands. Production volumes are deliberately small; Arnold & Son's positioning in the Citizen portfolio is as the group's haute-horlogerie flagship.
The modern Arnold & Son has specialised in astronomical complications. The HM Perpetual Moon (2013) carries a 29mm hand-engraved moon disc, the largest moonphase aperture ever put on a wristwatch. The DBG (Double Balance GMT) uses two side-by-side balance wheels beating in parallel for improved isochronism across two time zones. The DSTB (Dial Side True Beat) places a seconde morte (dead-beat seconds) mechanism on the dial side, exposing the jumping-seconds differential for the wearer to watch.
Dials and cases are finished to serious modern standards; movements are hand-decorated at La Joux-Perret with applied anglage, engraved bridges, and blued-steel screws. Retail ranges from approximately CHF 14,000 (Nebula openworked three-hander) to CHF 30,000 (HM Perpetual Moon) to CHF 50,000+ (Tourbillon Perpetual Moon and the DBS Skeleton variants). Collectors value the brand most for the moonphase and astronomical-complication specialisation, an angle few other Swiss houses occupy at this price point.
