The first wristwatch sold by F.P. Journe to be auctioned!

François-Paul Journe : I had created a prototype in 1990, which I exhibited on the AHCI stand (l’Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Indépendants, editor’s note) during the Basel Fair in 1991. I usually exhibited pocket watches and this was my first wristwatch: I had put into it everything I knew how to do in a pocket watch in a reduced format. But it was too early: the market wasn’t ready. I put it back on my wrist and went back to Paris, telling myself that I was going to build 12 on the same model. I did everything by hand in those days. It was a haute couture watch. One day, a Parisian collector asked me to make a model for him. His brother-in-law also commissioned one. At the time, I made each piece by hand: one a day. I hate doing the same thing twice. But I’d already built the prototype once, so I had to start all over again for the second and third watches. After those two, I stopped. There was no way I was going to make ten more. That’s the story of this watch.

They ordered it from me in 1991 and it took me two and a half years to make the two watches.

There are several different periods. At the end of the 80s, the quartz craze began to fade. People were fed up with having to change the batteries in their watches, and they slowly returned to mechanical timepieces. At that time, for example, the Patek Philippe stand at Basel, like that of Audemars Piguet, was tiny. From 1987 onwards, all the watchmaking bosses came to scrutinise our creations on the AHCI stand. In fact, many of the watchmakers who were members of the Academy went to work for brands that no longer knew how to make movements. After 1989, customers of mechanical watches began to set their sights on Patek Philippe, which had created a minute repeater and the Calibre 89 (the pocket watch created for the 150th anniversary of the manufacture and featuring 33 complications, editor’s note), but they were not making their own basic movements. At the time, everyone knew that the mechanism of a brand’s watches was not always made by the brand itself. At the time, there were four major players making movements: Frédéric Piguet, Jaeger LeCoultre, Lémania and Eta, which made robust calibres that worked well. When I arrived on the market in 1999-2000, I was making my own movements and had already created the Tourbillon Souverain and the Chronomètre à Résonance.

Only one understood what I was doing: it was Günter Blümlein (who headed up IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre and A. Lange & Söhne – LMH – and who helped bring mechanical watchmaking back to the forefront, editor’s note). He came to see my Tourbillon à Remontoir d’Égalité every day on the AHCI stand. That’s how I met him. He had given me his two business cards: one from IWC and one from Jaeger LeCoultre. Following this meeting, I had an appointment with Franck Muller for lunch and arrived late. Franck asked me what had happened to me and I replied: ‘I’ve just met God’ (laughs). For me, it was an exceptional encounter. I was just starting out. It was 1991. This man was a visionary. He was one of the first in the industry to want to revive mechanical movements.

To make a series for IWC’s 125th anniversary. He wanted me to make it for them. At the time, I had a THA production firm, which I had set up in 1989 in Sainte-Croix to make movements for other brands. Günter Blümlein asked me what my production capacity was. I told him 50 pieces a year, but that wasn’t even enough for his Hong Kong market! So I had to refuse. If I had accepted, I wouldn’t have made the watches we’re talking about today, and there wouldn’t have been the surprise effect when I launched into ‘ready-to-wear’ watches in 1999. The last time I saw Günter Blümlein was in 2000, when he was appointed to oversee all the brands in the Richemont group after the sale of LMH. He died six months later.

In 1994, I was in Paris wearing my Tourbillon à Remontoir d’Égalité on my wrist. I had an appointment at the Hippopotamus restaurant in Montparnasse. The girl at the reception looked at my watch and asked me: ‘What’s that thing? It’s wonderful!’ I said to myself that the world was changing. And that’s when I started the subscription watches. There were three stages: the prototype that I launched too early in 1991, the creation of the two watches 15 and 16 in 1993, and then the subscriptions.

In 1991 I decided that one of my signatures would be to make all the movements of my watches in gold, and so the mechanism of the 15/93 is made entirely in gold. When I started having my movements produced in 1999, there weren’t many manufacturers who wanted to work with gold to make pillar plate. So I kept the face of this watch with a gold dial but with a rhodium-plated brass movement.

For a watch, a tourbillon is as heavy as a rucksack full of gravel, so it generates friction. This friction will become increasingly annoying as the spring becomes weaker. The weight and friction of a tourbillon can only be controlled if the force is constant, because with a constant force, the friction remains the same.

In the 1970s, Georges Daniels made a tourbillon with an extremely complicated Remontoir d’Égalité. But in 1984, to annoy Georges Daniels, the collector Eugen Gschwind commissioned me to make a pocket watch with a Tourbillon and Remontoir d’Égalité. So I had to work on this function. Thanks to my technical knowledge and observations, I managed to make one that was much simpler than Georges’ and much more functional. Indeed, when the watch stops, the intermediate spring of the Remontoir d’Égalité has to be taut, otherwise the watch will not start again, whereas with mine, you can let the watch die. As soon as you wind it up, it starts again straight away. I found the result so attractive that I’ve added it to all my watches: there are even two pendant winding mechanism in the Resonance Chronometer.

He was a collector of historic 18th century pocket watches, and when I was working at my uncle’s (Michel Journe – a renowned restorer of antique clocks with exceptional mechanical knowledge), he used to bring us his watches for maintenance. So I got to know him in the 1980s. We remained friends until his death. Now I’m friends with his son, whom I met in the 1990s. His father brought him to my little workshop in the rue de Verneuil.

Yes, it’s like a theatre premiere. It’s the first wristwatch I’ve ever charged for. I was astonished that two people wanted to buy these watches because they weren’t fashionable.

Later, at the end of 1994. But I had to find the financial resources to do it. I needed 500,000 francs. So I launched a subscription. The calculation was simple: 500,000 francs divided by 20 people was 25,000 francs per watch. I also offered a platinum option at 27,500 and off we went.

The guilloché dial is reminiscent of Breguet, with Breguet hands, and the dial is screwed directly onto the plate in the same way that scientific instruments were made in Ferdinand Berthoud’s day. In the 18th century, there was no commitment to embellishment: what was needed was an effective look. In fact, after I launched the series in 1999, Francis Gouten, Piaget’s CEO at the time, asked me over lunch, ‘Is this a deliberate move, the screws on the dial? At the time, this was not done, but now it has become commonplace. Then there’s the Remontoir d’Égalité, which is the Holy Grail of watchmaking. The tourbillon is a tribute to Breguet, and the lyre-shaped tourbillon cage is a reference to Ernest Guinand, the watchmaker who remade the first tourbillons at the end of the 19th century.

If you take these three watches, the prototype, the 15/93 and the 16/93, they all have Breguet hands. But I’ve never made another one since. With the exception of the 30 Years Anniversary Tourbillon, the T30 (presented in Tokyo on 18 October 2013, editor’s note), because it was a tribute to my first pocket-watch in 1983. The T30 is an important watch that is not yet appreciated at its fair value. It will be, just like the 15/93, because only these models have Breguet hands.

When I saw the collector who owned the 15/93, when we went to a restaurant, he naturally wore his watch. Later, he bought others from the boutique in Geneva for his family. He was a loyal customer. He would always say to me: ‘How is it possible that a Frenchman like you, who comes to live in Switzerland, the home of watchmaking, is so successful? He couldn’t believe it, but he was proud of it, because he had discovered me 20 years before anyone else.

Not only did I hold it in my hands, I took it apart to redo the oils. And when I took it apart, I realised just how much I’d had to put up with having made it entirely by hand (laughs)! These days, all the new designers over-polish. I’ve never done that and this watch, which is very rustic, has more charm than what is being done today. And that’s what’s going to make the difference at the auction: it’s like finding an antique.

No. At this level I have a few collectors who have no limits, not to mention those I don’t know. I recently met a client from Hong Kong who also collects Patek Philippe watches. He buys everything we produce: he never leaves one out. And his wife has also built up a collection in parallel. They’re in competition (laughs). Watches don’t mean much to these clients, who also collect contemporary art worth 10 million or more. But when you have 10 million and you want to invest it in watches, you can afford exceptional pieces. We’ll see. And who knows, maybe this sale will also bring out the No 16/93 one day…

Estimated at more than 2 million francs, the F.P.Journe 1993 tourbillon will be sold by Phillips at the sale Reloaded: The Rebirth of Mechanical Watchmaking, 1980-1999, which will take place on 8 November 2024 in Geneva at the Hôtel Président.