Tribune des Arts - December 2003 - No 317
J.-C. P.
Were a supreme benchmark needed for Swiss watch manufacturies, that of Jaeger-LeCoultre of Le Sentier would certainly set the standard. For 170 years, the Jaeger-LeCoultre brand and its manufactory have been one and the same entity, founded on the passion of each of its current 900 employees encompassing more than 40 skills.
Ideal working conditions
A warmth that emanates already on the phone: Sylvette Pellegrino, the blonde receptionist, greets you unfailingly as though you were an old friend, with sincere cordiality. The immense buildings in Le Sentier (13,000 m2) are divided into small units so that, in each, one almost gets the feeling of being with a master watchmaker. This is definitely the case in the watchmaking specialities workshop where every complication from A to Z is made, from the extra-flat watch to the Memovox, through perpetual calendars, tourbillons and minute repeaters. Thirty versatile watchmakers work here in an extraordinary environment: light pours in from three sides through wide windows, some of which look directly onto Lac de Joux. “Depending on demand, we can produce extra-flat movements or perpetual calendars, each requiring special technical skill,” explains its foreman Christian Laurent. “We are in fact very flexible and have the necessary expertise”.
The same enthusiasm and the same friendliness are equally pervasive in each workshop, from the stamping workshops, where enormous presses are enthroned and where thousands of stamps, some dating from the foundation of the manufacture, are stored, and those workshops where the escapement wheels are cut using machines invented and developed at Jaeger-LeCoultre, or even the workshops in which the levers that are also manufactured entirely on site are inspected.
Loyalty, reliability, expertise
During all this time, embedded in 1996 in the first stone of a new building, an Atmos pendulum has been constantly running (another marvel signed by Jaeger-LeCoultre). Programmed until 2496, it symbolises the loyalty, reliability and expertise that reign in the manufactury. Especially since it can only be glimpsed through a peephole to make sure that it is still working perfectly. “Our policy is to have total control over all watchmaking techniques. whether mechanical or quartz movements,” explains Jean-Pierre Sassard, the Production Manager. “This allows us to react very quickly to the extent that it no longer takes eight months between a decision to launch a new model and its marketing”.
Such extensive control that Jérôme Lambert, Chief Executive of Jaeger-LeCoultre, has no hesitation in making a major announcement in the current context: “From next year, we will start integrating a new balance in our movements and will launch a new automatic calibre.”
You only do well what you do yourself
“Without this enthusiasm, without this passion, without this integration of skills, we would never have been able to create watches as stunning as the “Tourbillon Reverso” with its gold bottom plates and its sumptuous decoration, or the “Antoine LeCoultre 8 days”, a “Grand Master” marking a great date, decorated to reflect the importance of the bicentenary of the birth of Antoine LeCoultre,” Jérôme Lambert continues. “Watches that continue in the footsteps of our achievements for the 60th anniversary of the Reverso: that of offering all watch complications in a rectangular movement”.
“More than 150 years ago, Antoine LeCoultre wrote proudly in one of his notebooks: “You only do well what you do yourself”. Like him, we therefore do everything ourselves”.
J.-C. P.
Gathered on 20 June 2003 for the 170th anniversary of Jaeger-LeCoultre, all 900 employees at the manufactory managed to fit into the one photograph. DR
The cutting workshop: Romano Bonnelli and Catherine Rolando; Catherine is cutting darts measuring 7/100ths of a millimetre long. DR
