Roger Dubuis founded his eponymous Geneva manufacture in 1995 after a long career at Patek Philippe. The brand built its reputation on technically ambitious haute horlogerie with a deliberate focus on the Geneva Seal (Poinçon de Genève) certification: every Roger Dubuis movement is finished and certified to the Geneva canton specification, an unusually strict commitment for a small independent. The Excalibur line launched in 2005 as the brand's flagship, named after King Arthur's sword, with a deliberately bold visual identity featuring a fluted notched bezel with 12 prominent notches around the circumference (a design signature still used on every Excalibur today).
The technical centrepiece across the Excalibur range is the flying tourbillon. Roger Dubuis has produced flying tourbillons since the brand's founding, but the Excalibur Skeleton Flying Tourbillon (Cal. RD512SQ) became the brand's signature reference: a fully skeletonised 42mm or 45mm case with a flying tourbillon at 7 o'clock, 60-hour power reserve, hand-finished bridges visible from the dial side. The skeleton dial reveals the entire movement architecture from the front, a feat of mechanical exhibitionism that has become Roger Dubuis's defining commercial position.
In 2017 Roger Dubuis announced a partnership with Automobili Lamborghini, integrating Lamborghini design language into the Excalibur range. The Excalibur Aventador S uses a tonneau-shape case (referencing the Aventador supercar's angular geometry), a 12-degree-tilted balance wheel mounted at an angle, and a Pirelli-rubber strap. Various Lamborghini variants followed: Spider Pirelli, Spider Italdesign Edition One, Huracán Performante, etc. The partnership has been the brand's biggest marketing platform of the past decade.
The technical extremes of the Excalibur range are the Excalibur Quatuor (a 48mm case with four balance wheels mounted on inclined planes, two pairs working in differential opposition to compensate for gravitational rate errors, retail CHF 350,000+) and the Excalibur Spider Skeleton Double Flying Tourbillon (two flying tourbillons coupled via differential, retail CHF 480,000+). The standard Excalibur Skeleton Flying Tourbillon retails at approximately CHF 220,000; complete Excalibur range spans CHF 25,000 (entry steel) to CHF 1.2M+ (top haute horlogerie). Annual production is small (estimated under 1,000 watches per year across all Excalibur variants), and the brand has remained the most aesthetically maximalist of the Richemont independent watchmakers.
