THE HISTORY OF FINE WATCHES Watches and Wonders is a concept for themed exhibitions that highlights the heritage, expertise and values of Haute Horlogerie. The exhibition Watches & Wonders was officially inaugurated in the prestigious location of Tai Miao Temple inside the Forbidden City in Beijing, which displays six hundred historic and contemporary timepieces to relate the development of fine watchmaking from its origins, and its current revival. This historic and cultural exhibition also presents the work of the highly-skilled craftsmen and artists who contribute to the creation of a fine watch. The oldest pieces in the exhibition have been kindly loaned by the
rolex and
rolex watches Beyer Watch Museum in Zurich. The other more recent ones belong to the heritage of the ten Richemont brands: IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Lange & Söhne, Panerai, Vacheron Constantin, Cartier, Piaget, Baume & Mercier, Dunhill, and Montblanc. 1480-1750 : From ornamentation to greater accuracy Successor to the water clock, the mechanical clock with driving weight, gears and escapement developed in Europe from the late thirteenth century. The work of ironsmiths, these massive clocks were installed in civic and religious buildings to structure community life, for example in Exeter and London in England (circa 1285), Beauvais in France (circa 1305) and Milan in Italy (1336). The first watches, made possible by the invention of the mainspring, appeared in Italy in around 1480, then in France and Germany after 1500. They were miniature replicas by locksmiths of the ironsmiths' huge clocks. These early watches resembled small drums or spheres. As from 1550 they adopted geometric forms, then more elaborate shapes such as flowers, birds, skulls, shells and animals. These "fantasy watches" came back into fashion in the nineteenth century. The first watches, which kept time to within some thirty minutes a day, were more ornamental than functional. They were reserved for wealthy dignitaries who were eager to demonstrate their power, elegance and familiarity with science and progress. In 1675 Christiaan Huygens invented the balance-spring, thanks to which the watch's accuracy improved to four or five minutes a day. This justified the introduction of the minute hand. From now on, watches whose cases were decorated with enamel, engraving and precious stones were intended for show; plain cases signified a scientific and technical watch. 1780-1900 : Fine Watches for China From the late sixteenth century, the Europeans and their clocks, chiming watches and automata caught the attention of the Chinese Emperor, his court and his highest dignitaries. In the last years of the eighteenth century, with the Orient fascinated by mechanical timepieces, English, Swiss and French manufacturers adapted watches and automata to suit Chinese tastes and customs: watches and clocks sold in pairs, chased and engraved mechanisms that could be admired through a transparent dome back, others designed to withstand humid climates, with a centre seconds-hand or animated by automata and musical chimes. Cases were decorated with inverted symmetrical patterns, set with stones and pearls, or enhanced with meticulously executed enamel miniatures. Simultaneously, manufacturers of automata excelled in the creation of caged songbirds, snuffboxes and a multitude of fantasy objects. 1750-1850 : The birth of the modern watch Greater precision, advanced expertise, and more sophisticated tools allowed for unprecedented technical progress to the detriment of decoration, which until then had distracted from the lack of innovation. A burning issue of the time was how to plot a ship's position at sea. And so the British Parliament and the Board of Longitude organised a competition to find a way to determine longitude at sea. The winner's country could be certain to rule the oceans and international trade. With stakes so high, the competition inspired a long line of clockmakers: Pierre Le Roy and Ferdinand Berthoud in France; in England Thomas Mudge, John Arnold, Thomas Earnshaw and John Harrison, author of the winning invention in 1761. Henceforth technical expertise became the key to new knowledge, itself the starting point for innovation and research. Each master would engrave his latest invention with the words Invenit et Fecit, the predecessor to the modern-day patent. New talents came to the fore: Abraham-Louis Perrelet, acknowledged as the inventor of the self-winding watch, Jean-Marie Pouzait and Jacques-Frédéric Hourriet in Switzerland; Jean-André Lepaute, Robert Robin and countless others in France, not forgetting Jean-Antoine Lépine and Abraham-Louis Breguet (of Swiss origin), both recognised as the fathers of the modern mechanical watch. It was during this golden age of innovation and invention that Jean-Marc Vacheron opened his workshop in Geneva, in 1755. Now Vacheron Constantin, the firm has continued uninterrupted to incorporate and most importantly develop new expertise, play a pioneering role in the manufacture of watches, and innovate in design and decoration to create an immediately identifiable style. 1850-1900 : The watch becomes part of daily life Watchmakers were the first profession to embrace large-scale production. From working alone in their homes, they grouped together in Manufactures. Their activity complemented that of the specialised master watchmakers who produced complication movements from small workshops. The onset of industrialisation, scientific progress and the rise of the railroads, leading to international time measurement and in 1884 the creation of 24 world time zones, irreversibly transformed the watchmaker's art. The basic watch had to satisfy demand from the widest population; the technical watch meanwhile was indispensable to scientists and scholars. The leading Manufactures - LeCoultre (established in 1833), Baume now Baume & Mercier (1834), Lange (1845), IWC (1868) and Piaget (1874) – concentrated on the mass production of more or less standard movements, though without sacrificing accuracy or quality. In 1841 Vacheron Constantin made a pioneering move when it installed machines with which to produce strictly identical mechanisms. Other manufacturers rapidly followed suit. Eager to abandon the winding key, in 1847 Charles-Antoine LeCoultre invented a system whereby the watch could be wound and set by the crown. The principle is the same today. By the 1880s the watch displayed all that could be mechanically measured: a simple or perpetual calendar, astronomical information, local time in the world's main cities, and chronographs with tachometer, pulsometer or asthmometer scales. Vacheron Constantin and LeCoultre offer two such examples. In contrast, precious watches such as those by Cartier (established in 1847) gave clear precedence to the jeweller's creativity over functionality. Even with the advent of the wristwatch, the pocket watch continued to benefit from innovative ideas into the twentieth century. 1900-1920 : When the wristwatch becomes jewellery In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, jewellers entered the watchmakers' preserve to transform watches according to their vision. Thanks to Art Nouveau and to the creations of Parisian jewellers, led by Cartier, pocket watches rediscovered the elegance they had left behind in the early industrial years.
