Switzerland produces 3% of the world’s watches but that 3% is worth $24.3bn a year – almost as much money as the rest of the world makes with the other 97%

In the Joux Valley, in the south-west corner of Switzerland, the traditional craft of watchmaking is flourishing. It’s not just leading companies that have workshops in the Jura Mountains but also highly skilled, independent craftsmen, as John Laurenson discovers.

The most complicated watch ever made was unveiled in Geneva in September before being whisked off to its mysterious buyer in New York.

The buyer paid an estimated $9m (£6m) for a watch that has 57 special features and 2,826 parts. It gives you the chimes of Big Ben, the phases of the moon and the Hebrew calendar but you can’t actually wear it as it weighs 2lb (900g) and is the size of a Big Mac.

“Sometimes people say it’s stupid to create a mechanical watch with so many complications,” says Vincent Jatton, director of the Joux Valley’s Espace Horloger watch museum. “But when you create such a piece, you innovate for the future. You invent something you will maybe produce later on for a large public.”

Along the valley, with its lakes, its cows and its towering pine trees, I go to meet one of Switzerland’s watchmaker-innovators. There’s a brass plaque on the door marked Philippe Dufour, Horlogerie Compliquee -Complicated Watchmaking.