Girard Perregaux

With the kind support of Kelvin, a few details and anecdotes of GP and JeanRichard

 

G`day,

Kelvin and yours truly would like to add a few details to the wonderful trip report below; more of the anecdotal side and only randomly choosen aspects that came to mind, but you may find it interesting. So here we go:

"The Big Blue"

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La Chaux-De-Fonds is a remote place in Switzerland and despite the outstanding importance for the swiss watchmaking industry, it?s still a small town.
GP today is the largest single employer (and with roughly 250 employees, it should say a bit about the size of the town) and ever was. The brand is important to the city and the city is important to the brand, which probably is understandable if recalling the fact the brand is located in the city for more than 200 years and some generations of employees do work under the same roof. It?s not a rare occurence family members of different generations work together in the same department at GP, which often leads to the perception GP being a large family rather than a faceless watch brand.
When the then new main buliding at Place Girardet was built in 1948, the blue colour of the outer building front was a remarkable innovation. In fact it?s still the only blue coloured building in La Chaux-De-Fonds and donour of the name GP was given by the inhabitants of the city immediately afterwards: "The Blue". That?s how GP is often called still today and may give an idea how deep the roots of the brand are. Tradition, from an unexpected direction.

"Moyen"


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The "new" manufacture facilities at Rue Numa Droz added another 3.100 square meters of workspace to the factory; bitter needed space, one may add, as the old "blue" building was not large enough to house all facilities.
Actually it?s not a new building, but it has been a watch factory ever since the construction work started in 1905. The building served the former brand of Cyma-Tavannes (one of the largest watch brands for many decades), Ebel and Girard-Perregaux. After thorough renovations in 1988 and 2002/2003, it became the place for the part of GP?s manufacturing departments called the "Moyen Factory".
This part of the facilities houses the production of watch parts (movements, cases, bracelets) as well as R&D, design, prototyping and assembly for other than Haute Horlogerie pieces. The administration, Haute Horlogerie and After Sales departments are still located at Place Girardet, where they have ever been and form the "Haute Factory".
A special aspect of the "Moyen" factory is the age of the building, which underwent several additions and changes over the decades. A modern factory requires different installations than in 1904, but the base is still unchanged. That?s no surprise or does come by accident; CEO Dr. Macaluso, a fully educated architect, does have a sharp eye for details and enjoys the careful, but thorough restauration of a building a lot.


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It would have been a lot easier, faster and tremendously less money to create a new and post-modern factory building "in the wild" outside the town.
But GP, being tied to the city of La Chaux-De-Fonds by tradition, is focussing to preserve traditions whenever possible. That?s apparent from the building: of course the large hall takes away precious workspace, but it has been there ever since (and it?s quite a nice view in nature). Therefore the "Moyen" factory, being in place for 100 years, was preserved as much as possible and, much like the blue main building, became an integral part of what sets GP apart.


"Substance"

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These pictures may give an impression how things are done; each part is milled out from a pre-processed but otherwise solid block of material. Such a production leads to a significant amount of remaining material, particularly when keeping in mind the parts are more often made of Platinum or gold. Of course the remainders will be recycled, but the recycling process requires extraction of contaminating materials such as oil. That?s some efforts and more costly, which makes this production a rather costly thing to do. This is visible particularly when having a look at GP?s solid gold rotors and there are certainly much cheaper ways to do them.

"Pedigree"

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These pieces go back to the days of Bautte shortly after 1791 to early 1800?s. Each of these watches and all pieces of the GP Museum do have a special story or meaning, but the Bautte watches are very special.
Bautte was specialized in ultra-thin and gem-set watches; a true luxury maker and the left and middle watches represent this rather impressively, such as a different example in the GP collection which measures 3.3mm in height only. This still would be extremely thin for a contemporary timepiece, but roughly 200 years ago it was quite a sensation. The right one pictured above is a jump hour, representing complicated timepieces as another field of work by Bautte then. Bautte had many famous customers among royal courts throughout Europe and in the world, for his fine casework and the delicate movements. On a side note, one customer may be both interesting and well known: a certain Monsieur Breguet.

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The Three Gold Bridges. One could write a book about these and not cover all and any aspect, but GP?s recent booklet "The Uniqueness of the Tourbillon with Three Gold Bridges" might a good start for those interested in the heritage and history (and i strongly recommend to get an example).
In a nutshell, these two examples testify the development of Constant Girard-Perregaux?s most famous work. The very first pieces came with parallel bridges, while later pieces (roughly since 1860) featured the well-known arrow-shaped bridges which are still in use today.
The design makes it one of the most original and unique movements and the contemporary GP Three Gold Bridges Tourbillon the oldest movement in current production (not sure about the Breguet Tradition, though).
The icon of the brand and certainly an icon in the watch world, with a very rare glimpse at the origins (there are less than 10 pieces with parallel bridges in existance).


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This piece doesn?t look as elaborate as the magnificent watch in the GP Museum otherwise. And actually, it doesn?t hold up. The reason to include one in GP?s collection is more anecdotal:
This and 30.000 more watches were made for the US oil company SHELL in 1940. Here?s the original magazine advertisement in use back then:



As you see, the pocket watches came filled with SHELL motor oil!
Actually they did work rather well, although the timekeeping result was not to be compared with what is usually achieved today. Quite a surprise piece back then and the only piece of the GP Museum where the story is more important than the watchmaking art. But then, it?s a nice story



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If there?s a "holy grail" in watch collecting besides the Three Gold Bridges tourbillons, it?s this one.
The first wristwatch ever made in serial production!
GP made a batch of 2.000 pieces in 1880 on order of the German Emperor for the officers in the Royal German Navy then. It?s for sure a watch with an exceptional meaning to the watch world, although it took the wristwatches another 50 years to finalize their domination over the pocket watches.
Unfortunately all pieces are lost and this one is a reproduced model only; apart from drawings and descriptions in GP?s archives, it was not possible to find an example until today.
So if you know one around, it surely will have a warm place and great caring new home in Villa Marguerite!

"Skills & Passion"

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A particularly interesting point is the actual work done at GP.
As with any manufactory, making a watch requires to produce the necessary movement and watch parts first. For GP this means to do as much as possible and reasonable within the manufactory facilities and to rely on specialized suppliers (of swiss provenance and production facilities, of course) when needed. But this alone doesn?t make you a functional watch; it needs to fine-tune, assemble, regulate, check and complete the whole thing.
This is an aspect where GP and JeanRichard are different from others; what is happening in the production departments is actually a lot of manual work. Sure it needs a basic machinery and tools to do so, simply because screwing in a screw without having a (proper) screwdriver is quite a difficult task. Therefore you see some small machines, such as the small press in the picture on the right above. This machine is used to press in the center jewel in a tourbillon bridge; it allows to do it very smooth and very very accurately. A wrong set jewel, which resting too deep or slightly angled in the setting, will seriously affect the timekeeping result and thus it is a critical work. Now the same procedure can be done by automated machinery with extremely low tolerances, thus the final outcome will be likely but even more cost-effective. Nonetheless, GP still relies on the skills and passion of the watchmakers when doing hand-made watches. That?s one reason as to why there are few of them each year, because it needs more time to do so.
Even if GP could do many more watches in a less costly and more automated production, the very traditional way the things are done is a base of the brand?s philosophy. That?s one reason why you see this sort of machinery at GP and JeanRichard, while the same machines and tools can be found in other?s brand museums only.

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One may suspect the widely manual assembly can be seen only in the Haute Horlogerie department, where the costly high-end pieces are born (and thus the costs of manual work may not count as much).
But in fact, that?s not true and the two pictures above reveal it is basically the same picture throughout the whole manufactory: no robots, no computer-controlled 21st century bits, many skilled hands.
Of course GP and JeanRichard rely on computer controls where necessary and useful, such as timing machines for timekeeping tests or ultra-modern machinery and tools for tests of the 1/100 to 1/1000 tolerances within the parts production and Quality Control. That?s necessary because doing the same with ancient tools will not ensure the same grade of quality and the use of sophisticated modern machinery leads to tremendous improvements. After all, no customer will accept a watch with the average timekeeping results of a watch made in the 1940?s or 1950?s, where a watch accurate to a couple of minute per week was not inacceptable. Today customers expect more and thus it needs more efforts to ensure the outcome will please them.
Nonetheless, costs reduction or cutting corners never was an issue for GP and JeanRichard and still today the assembly is widely done by hand.

"Future"

GP?s and JeanRichard?s R&D departments are very busy. That?s apparent by the number of new models and new movements added over the past 2-3 years and, maybe not surprisingly, there are of course more to come in the future.
On close view, the pictures include two new movements by GP; one is intended for use in watches of the more affordable range and the other for pieces of the high-end range.
So you may have a look and take a guess

Again, thanks a lot to Kelvin for the excellent pictures and impressions!
And if you didn?t do so already, don?t miss Kelvin?s coverage in his earlier posts!


Greetings from germany,

Peter

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