In 2020 Alcée Montfort conceived an audacious idea: a luxury clock that buyers could assemble themselves.

“Our goal was to share the beauty of watchmaking,” Ms. Montfort said in a recent video interview. “A table clock is a watch with bigger dimensions,” she said, noting that the mechanical movement at the heart of both is the same. The best way to create the passion is to allow anyone to assemble their own timepiece, said Ms. Montfort.

She and her husband, Benoît Montfort, founded the brand Maison Alcée in 2021 in the northeastern French city of Reims, where they and their four employees now test components and tools provided by 30 suppliers and then assemble the kits.

Each kit’s wooden presentation box includes 233 components — all made by hand, mostly in the Jura, a Franco-Swiss watchmaking region about five hours south of Reims — and 17 clock-making tools, most crafted expressly for beginners. There also is a 150-page history and instruction book and a series of QR codes that access video explanations. Each customer also is given access to a private WhatsApp group for questions and to allow the team to monitor progress.

The clock, which Ms. Monfort said takes about 10 hours to assemble, was named the Persée — Persée is the French version of Perseus, the Greek hero whose sons included Alcée, or Alcaeus. It is a sleek skeletonized timepiece deliberately reminiscent of an hourglass, that is 100 millimeters tall (slightly less than four inches), chimes the hour and has a two-week power reserve.

Though success is guaranteed, building the clock is not an easy experience, said Ms. Montfort, 33, a former manager of the movement assembly workshop at TAG Heuer. But when it begins to run, “you are like a child,” she said. “You are really proud of yourself.”