{"id":33316,"date":"2019-12-13T14:29:47","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T13:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/2019\/12\/13\/watchmaking-heritage-a-current-issue\/"},"modified":"2022-11-26T12:56:50","modified_gmt":"2022-11-26T11:56:50","slug":"watchmaking-heritage-a-current-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/2019\/12\/13\/watchmaking-heritage-a-current-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Watchmaking heritage: a current issue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Heritage\nwatchmaking has never been so trendy. Return of the vintage, forgotten heroes, auctions\nof collector’s items: everything contributes to the great return of the beautiful\nhistory of swiss watchmaking. Discovery of a burning issue\nfor the big factories. <\/h3>\n\n

Olivier M\u00fcller<\/h4>\n\n

No one else\nbuys a watch to tell the time. From the computer to the smartphone\nby the tablet, the radio or his car, the time is everywhere. Today,\nthe purchase of a watch is based exclusively on what it represents: a\nchronograph as a sign of his sportiness, a Rolex as a testimony (supposedly)\nof his success, a Patek Philippe or a Breguet to mark his adherence to the\ntraditional Haute Horlogerie, an Apple Watch to highlight its\ncharacter 2.0, a LIP or a Dodane to anchor itself in French watchmaking,\na whirlpool to display its technicality, etc. <\/p>\n\n

All these\npieces have in common that they offer a particular emotion that has been\nbuilt on one thing: their history. The big factories\nSwiss are often centuries old. What differentiates them is not their\ncreativity (round watches with three hands for the most part!) but\ntheir heritage, their legacy. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Today,\na brand’s heritage is its most fundamental foundation. The industry\nthe watchmaking industry has understood this, with a large number of vintage reissues that bear witness to the\nof its heritage and archives. Moreover, the famous “Dictionary\nhistorique de la langue fran\u00e7aise ” by Alain Rey (2383 pages of erudition)\nsets the record straight: contrary to what one might think,\nthe “archives” do not come from the Greek ” archeos” <\/em>, which means\n“ancient”, but from ” arkheion” <\/em>:\nthe ” residence of the high magistrates\nof the city” <\/em>. In short, the archives are not the old documents\nthat we think of at first sight but the important documents of the city.\nThat’s the debate: archives are what’s important!<\/p>\n\n

Today,\nmost of the factories have a dedicated department. It will be called sometimes\nHeritage, Image or Brand Heritage. It is often attached to the\nMarketing. The organizational will is unequivocal: the heritage\nof the brand is essentially at the service of “storytelling\nbuilt for each new product. In these times when vintage is all the rage,\nit is obviously a huge advantage to be able to anchor a reprint\nin its original bed, with a lot of period advertisements, extracts from\narchives, catalogs and advertisements.<\/p>\n\n

Some cases\nthe Swiss watchmaking valleys, like Heuer. The Management\nHeritage has been concretized by Jean-Claude Biver (CEO in 2017) to build\nthe story around the brand’s recent launches – Carrera and Autavia in\nhead. <\/p>\n\n

” Before, the heritage was managed by the SAV, <\/em>\nexplains Catherine Eberl\u00e9-Devaux, who has held the position for three years. ” Today, we have referenced and indexed\nmore than 10’000 documents and prizes that allow us to reconstruct\nour history than to know the value of our component stock\nhistorical data. The most important thing is to avoid that our employees arbitrate\nthemselves, internally, what is important and what is not. By\nFor example, not long ago, the legal department took down a box of which it\nhad no more use for it. I found our original contracts of engagement from\nof the very first Calibre 11, the historic movement of our company.\nMonaco! \u00bb. <\/em><\/p>\n\n

The volume of\npieces preserved in the heritage is certainly only a figure but testifies despite\nall about the patrimonial will of a brand. Some of them speak for themselves. ” The Cartier collection was created in 1983 and\nnow includes more than 2,000 pieces<\/em>,” says Pierre Rainero,\nDirector of style, image and heritage of the company. His department is\nprobably one of the most imposing at the moment: about forty\nof employees. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Van Cleef\n& Arpels has reached astronomical figures for both watches and\njewelry: 1400 linear meters of archives, 100’000 drawings, 250’000\ngouaches, 100’000 ektas, 50’000 photos. Finally, we should not forget the\nSeiko’s Japanese precision: ” our\nmuseum has a total of 13,794 watches, 497 of which are on display, and 1836\nclocks, 235 of which are on display<\/em>,” the brand explains with a rare\nprecision. <\/p>\n\n

At Breguet,\nthe presence of Emmanuel Breguet on the Management Committee is a considerable asset\nfor the manufacture. ” I wrote the\nfirst official history of my grandfather over 25 years ago, in 1993. It\nthere has never been a break in the indexing of parts, movements and dials\nof each of our watches. It is a very homogeneous corpus<\/em> “, explains\nEmmanuel Breguet. <\/p>\n\n

Longines\nis still the benchmark. The brand has been operating since 1867, without the slightest\nand produced nearly 51 million watches: they are\nall, individually, listed, annotated, commented! Until 1969\n(122 years of production), everything was recorded by hand in large\npaper registers covered with leather, with a unit weight of 17 kilos per volume. <\/p>\n\n

Since 1969,\ncomputer science has taken over. Longines takes note of everything: box number\nmovement, characteristics, recipient, place of sale, etc. It is a source\nendless inspiration for the current vintage reissues. It is also a\nheritage that Longines watchmakers are very much in demand for when it comes to restoring\nof the old pieces. More prosaically, when some collectors\nquestion Longines about one of its pieces, it is also a way to know\nif it is not…a counterfeit! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heritage watchmaking has never been so trendy. Return of the vintage, forgotten heroes, auctions of collector’s items: everything contributes to the great return of the beautiful history of swiss watchmaking.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":31634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[732],"tags":[1216,765,767,947,816,766],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Longines-Watch-183-_1-1.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33317,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33316\/revisions\/33317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33316"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lhonoremagazine.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=33316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}