Where Old Meets New

Merging traditional crafts with modern technology is the essence of Girard-perregaux’s watchmaking ethos. Nicolette Wong peers into the inner workings of the brand at its manufacture in La Chaux-de-fonds, Switzerland

irard-perregaux’s history is perhaps one of the longest in the watchmaking industry, stretching as far back as 1791, when a watchmaker named Jean-françois Bautte signed his name to his first watches. In 1889, another talented watchmaker named Constant Girard presented his famous tourbillon with three gold bridges pocket watch at the Universal Exposition in Paris, garnering a gold medal. Later in 1906, the trajectories of these two men collided when Girard-perregaux & Cie acquired and integrated Jean-françois Bautte & Cie into its own workings. Clearly, given the brand’s long history, its grasp on traditional watchmaking is not in question. This January, during a visit to the manufacture, we witnessed how each technical watch component is decorated and finished by hand, using tools as humble as a thin stick of hard boxwood. Each line of the

cotes de d Genève finishing and each ring in the circular c graining is also accomplished by hand, h albeit using mechanised tools. t Here, the human touch truly matters. We were told that a set of Girard-perregaux’s famous arrow-shaped gold bridges takes an artisan a a full week to polish by hand. Ju Just after our visit to the finishing and decora decoration department, we were swiftly reminde reminded that despite Girard-perregaux’s deep co commitment to centuries-old hand crafts, it its other watchmaking aspects are plan planted firmly in the 21st century. The movement mov development and testing departm departments made that quite clear. In the moveme movement development department, we saw how engineers created three-dimensional models of each calibre. The software also allows for cross-sectional cutaways to view the exact interaction between different components at every part of the calibre. And when completed, the movement is animated to see whether it would work. Alas, a computer-simulated calibre is not quite like the real thing. That is where the larger-than-life models come in. Models that are enlarged to 20 times the movement’s actual size are created to see if they will function in our physical reality. Once functional success has been established, the manufacture works on perfecting each individual component, and then 20 real movements are created, which Girard-perregaux calls series zero. These movements will never make it to market; they are destined to live out their entire lives in the testing department, for the sake of gathering data. Why so many? Well, one movement simply isn’t a reliable representative of the entire group of movements, so a larger sample size is needed. In the testing department, the technicians perform experiments on the series zero movements and their individual components. There are special machines used to perform drop tests to ascertain the movements’ resilience to shocks at different levels of acceleration. Slow-motion cameras record precisely what happens, capturing the action at 220 frames per second (regular video is set at about 60fps). Other machines measure torque, power, and even the tribological forces (the science of the interaction of surfaces in motion) within a movement. There is even a machine just to measure what happens when a winding crown is pushed in and pulled out— several thousand times in a row. A feedback loop exists between the movement development and testing departments to eliminate any functional problems with existing calibres and to better develop new creations in the future. Movement development and technical testing at Girard-perregaux are not about creating just any solution to a watchmaking problem, but about creating the best possible one. The tri-axial tourbillon, for instance, is the brand’s solution to the problem of gravity acting to diminish the accuracy of a watch escapement, while its award-winning Constant Escapement tackles the problem of uneven torque being delivered from the mainspring to the balance wheel. It is Girard-perregaux’s dedication to innovation that allows the brand to create such mechanical marvels. Combine this with the technical acumen of its watchmakers and the detail-oriented hand-finishing of its artisans, and you understand why Girard-perregaux is so well respected within the industry.