Our Story

Before Lucius

I was running two parallel obsessions before Lucius Atelier existed, and neither of them looked like a watch business.

One was luxury collecting. I started in 2007 with the watches most collectors finish at — Patek, IWC, Rolex, Glashütte. The first piece I obsessed over was a Patek Philippe Calatrava 5296, a 38mm round dress watch with a dial so clean it almost looked unfinished. It was the watch that taught me what 38mm meant on a real wrist. Not on a forum post, not on a marketing photo — on my own wrist, every day for years. The Patek Perpetual Calendar 5140 taught me the same lesson at 37.2mm, with three sub-dials thrown in for complication. A Rolex Explorer 114270 at 36mm. A Rolex Oyster Perpetual 114300 at 39mm with the blue Sub-style lume. A Rolex Submariner Date 16610 at 40mm. And the cautionary tale: an IWC Big Pilot 5002 Transitional at 46mm — beautiful by every objective measure, but the thing slid around my wrist like it was on the wrong person. I sold it more out of physics than regret.

Eleven years of buying and selling at the top of the market taught me one thing the marketing copy never said out loud: smaller wears better. Almost always. On almost everyone.

The other obsession was mechanical curiosity. Somewhere around year five of the luxury hunt, I bought a sub-$100 Seiko 5 just to take it apart. I wanted to understand what was actually happening under the dial — the balance wheel, the mainspring, the way the rotor wound in only one direction. The Patek was the watch I wore. The Seiko 5 was the watch I learned on.

That double life — luxury aesthetics on one wrist, mechanical curiosity on the workbench — is the entire setup for what came next.

The Pivot

The pivot happened around 2017. I'd been collecting for a decade, and the Seiko 5 on the bench had quietly turned into three of them. I started buying aftermarket parts — a sapphire crystal here, a set of hands there — and discovered an entire underground economy of modders building Seikos that didn't look like Seikos.

So naturally, I bought an SKX007. Everyone said that's where you start. I built it up, wore it for a week, and the thing felt like a hockey puck on my wrist. The lug-to-lug was wrong for me. The thickness was wrong. The whole proportional language was wrong — and I'd just spent eleven years training my eye on watches that got those proportions right. The SKX007 went back in the box within a week.

Then I found the SKX013 — the smaller-case sibling. 38mm. Closer to the Explorer 36 silhouette I'd lived in for years. That was the watch. That was the platform.

And then I hit the wall every smaller-case modder hits: the parts shelf was nearly empty. Every bezel and bezel insert in the aftermarket catalog was sized for the SKX007. Every case was 41mm or 42mm. Every chapter ring was the wrong diameter. The 36–38mm modding world existed in theory and almost nowhere in practice.

So I decided to make them myself.

August 2018 to now

Lucius Atelier launched in August 2018, out of Singapore, as a one-person operation. I designed the first cases. I sourced the first dials. I shot the first product photos. I packed the first orders. I answered the first support emails. Eight years later, I still do all of that — there is no team, there has never been a team, and the brand isn't planning to become one.

The case lineup grew the way a one-person operation has to grow: one case at a time, each one a year of work.

The Explorer 36 came first in mid-2022 — the smaller-case Explorer homage I'd wanted since 2007. Then the Pilot 34, the smallest GMT-capable case in the lineup. Then the 62GS 36 — bezel-less, box sapphire, the build I'd been chasing since the first time I held a Grand Seiko. The Seikonaut 38 followed for the sports-luxury crowd. The Seiko-Dweller — our Grade 4 Ti integrated-bracelet build — stands on its own. Then the Bauhaus 33, the smallest dress mod in the catalog. The 1908 36 for the formal wrist. And now, in May 2026, the SKX013 Diver 38 — the modder's evolution of the discontinued SKX013, the case that started everything.

Eight cases. All small. All thin. All under 11mm thick. All designed for the wrist that the SKX007 never fit. All sharing the same dial spec, hand fitment, and NH-movement compatibility, so a part you buy for one case carries over to the next.

That's the entire portfolio. There is no 41mm+ case in the pipeline. There won't be one.

I built this brand for the modders I couldn't find parts for when I was one of them. That's the whole story.