MICROBRAND
Kortela Valta makes a strong case for slow watchmaking in Finland
In Porvoo, two young watchmakers are building hand-finished, time-only watches on vintage Omega gear trains, and streaming the work as they go.
A Kortela Valta wristwatch. Image: Kortela Valta
Built in Porvoo
Kortela Valta is a two-man workshop in Porvoo, Finland, run by Roope Kortela and René Valta. The pair met in the same class at the Finnish School of Watchmaking, a programme built to turn out service and repair technicians, and decided early that they wanted to make watches rather than fix them. Short stints abroad followed, Kortela with Christian Lass in Denmark and Valta with Torsti Laine in Switzerland, before the brand’s first watch, the Eka (Finnish for “first”), was produced as an eight-piece numbered series. The two now work on watchmaking full-time.
What separates them from most start-up independents is how much they show. Transparency is a stated core value, and the pair call themselves the livestreaming watchmakers: the workshop streams sessions live on Twitch and documents the bench work on Instagram and YouTube, giving collectors a view of the slow, repetitive handwork that small-scale watchmaking usually keeps behind closed doors.
Why collectors are watching
Kortela Valta’s appeal is not volume. It is proximity to the makers and clarity about how the watches are built. The case and crown are machined and finished in the workshop, the hands are made in-house, and the bridges are cut from German silver and finished by hand with wide, rounded bevels and the inner angles that signal serious intent. The movements are built on vintage Omega gear trains, restored at the bench rather than replaced.
Taken together, that places the brand in the time-only, finish-first lineage that Philippe Dufour’s Simplicity opened up a quarter-century ago: no complications, nothing to hide behind, and a movement that has to earn its price under a loupe.
The watch to know
The Toka, “second” in Finnish, is the one to know. It is a 38.5 mm, 9 mm-thick stainless steel time-only watch with small seconds, manually wound, running at a leisurely 18,000 vph (2.5 Hz) with roughly 43 hours of power reserve. The technical step up from the Eka is a fully in-house free-sprung balance with platinum timing weights, paired with a Breguet overcoil bent in the workshop.
The dial is the draw: champlevé enamel on a sterling silver base, enamelled by a specialist in Neuchâtel to the workshop’s design. It comes in two “Seasons” editions: Winter, a deep black named for the kaamos polar night, and Summer, a clear sky blue. Six numbered pieces per colour, €25,500 excluding taxes, direct from the brand.
Start here
Why this watch, on this wrist?