Our friends at The Watches TV have published a beautiful three-part video series on manufacturing a watch fully by hand as demonstrated by Greubel Forsey’s recent Hand Made 1. In this series, Marc-André Deschoux and his team get deep into the manufacture and talk to all of the artisans involved, beginning with founders Stephen Forsey and Robert Greubel.
In the “Objects of Desire” series, I look at pieces that fall into the categories unobtanium and timenotrightium, as my Quill & Pad colleague Joshua Munchow might say. And, where better to start on the topic of desire than with the watches of Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey?
In his previous article on the Time Aeon Le Garde Temps project, Joshua Munchow poetically compares the development of this wristwatch to an epic quest. At the time I didn’t appreciate just how true the analogy is, though perhaps not so much a hero’s quest as a band-of-brothers journey. And what a journey it’s turning out to be.
After arduous and exhausting trials of skill and wit over many years of one’s life, sometimes the best path is the one with new challenges and goals. This is especially true if you are a watchmaker tasked with learning and disseminating all of the extremely difficult skills of traditional watchmaking. This is the true story of Michel Boulanger and the conclusion of his first epic adventure and the beginning of the next one. This is the end of the story of Naissance d’une Montre, Le Garde Temps. Or is it?
Dominique Renaud began working at Audemars Piguet in 1980. He received his watchmaker education in Besançon, though his family originally hailed from the Vallée de Joux. Renaud and Guilo Papi, both employed by Audemars Piguet at the time, struck out on their own, founding Renaud & Papi SA in 1986 to explore avenues of high complication. So why do I bring this up now?
The Le Garde Temps, Naissance d’une Montre project separates true lovers of watchmaking from the chaff: there is no big brand name on the dial, celebrity ambassadors, or expensive marketing campaign. It is pure watchmaking for it’s own sake to perpetuate traditional crafts and skills. There is, right now, in this universe, a watch that features the names Greubel Forsey and Philippe Dufour on its dial.
In the “Objects of Desire” series, I’ll be looking at pieces that fall into the latter two categories – a mix of unobtanium and timenotrightium, as my Quill & Pad colleague Joshua Munchow might say. And, where better to start on the topic of desire than with the watches of Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey?
In ten years, Greubel Forsey has presented the Double Tourbillon 30°, the Opus 6 for Harry Winston, the Tourbillon 24 Secondes, Invention Piece 1 (another of my all-time favorite watches), the Quadruple Tourbillon, the GMT, the Double Balancier and lastly the Quantième Perpétuel à Équation du Temps.
There are many categories of people who partake in the experience of watches. I like to give some of them labels like watch enthusiasts, watch collectors, watch fanboys (or girls), watch connoisseurs, watch geeks, and watch-aholics.
Each category shares aspects with the others, but they all have their own distinct variety of enthusiasm in which people focus on different avenues for their passions.
The reason I want to talk about my definitions of watch love is because I want to talk about one of the biggest horology nerd projects going on right now: Le Garde Temps, Naissance d’une montre. Translated this means “The Timepiece, the birth of a watch.”