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Akteo watch company
AKTEO is a French watchmaking company from Besançon, a city near the Swiss border whose important watch making industry had fallen victim to the Asian quartz expansion in the seventies. Attempts to return at least part of the lost watchmaker cake followed in the early nineties when French designer Jean–Christophe Mareschal introduced more than a hundred motives in a series called Taboo – Taboo on topic of Professions, hobbies and passions. Many colorful, cute and cheeky designs were placed on dials which expressed the imagination and playfulness of their designers. Computer technology made it possible to cut the little details and enable their coloring. Some of the professions that have been places on the dials have been a hairdresser, carpenter, dentist, designer, lawyer; each represented with utensils and tools necessary to perform certain activities. These interesting and imaginative objects were not mere decoration, or a pun, but they also had the function of being hands of the watch. Akteo Design J. C. Mareschal was registered in 1997 at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
The Akteo company has been partner of important cultural events such as Cannes Film Festival and various music festivals, launching for each occasion original models in limited edition. Akteo watches could be found in the collections of Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, in MoMA in New York and San Francisco, in Japan - Museum of Modern Art, Saitama and Pola Museum of Art, Hakone, and, finally in the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb.
Today Akteo has more than 300 models divided into several thematic sections – Art, Life's Sensations, Professions, Sports, Nature, Civilization, Time. When marketing their products it is always stressed that they are French made, made of stainless steel or titanium, dial protected with mineral glass, equipped with quality quartz movement, water resistant to 50 m depth and that they have two year's warranty. Nevertheless, it must be mentioned that watches are not entirely made in France– they have Swiss movements; most oftenRonda calibers, with some exceptions (e.g. ISA in the ladies watch cat. no. 10).
http://54.247.69.120/build/movio/movioT ... n/58/akteo

1946-2006
“Your heart was warm and happy
With the lilt of Irish laughter
Every day and in every way
Now forever and ever after."