Some 15 years ago and more, there was a rapid-fire sketch show on the BBC here in the UK called The Fast Show. One of its recurring characters was ‘the pub bore’ – an acute parody of the odious, opinionated, booze-swilling know-it-all.
He would seize on the mention of any of life’s vocations and claim not only to understand the trials of each, but also to have experienced them himself, however unlikely. From lorry driver to football manager, Archie had done it all, and would reflect on this with the refrain, ‘I used to be a single mother myself – hardest game in the world. Thirty years, man and boy!’
Odd as it may be, I was reminded of this patently absurd character when in Geneva recently for an exhibition of rare handcrafts, hosted by Patek Philippe on the top floors of their plush Rue du Rhône salon.
It was there while in the company of the brand’s president, Thierry Stern, that I heard a number of stories that confirmed something I’ve long suspected – that being an enameller is the hardest job in the world.
‘Yes, it’s really hard,’ says Stern, whose grandfather first tried to teach him the enameling basics when he was just six years old. ‘You have to restart a lot of times before you get it right. To become a master, you have to make a lot of mistakes. To realize one piece you need at least a year, sometimes two.’
The time it takes is one thing, but it’s this business of restarting that’s heart-breaking. ‘The last apprentice I saw who was good collapsed after 10 years,’ Stern recalls rather dramatically. ‘He was finishing a beautiful pocket watch and the last time he put it in the oven, a bubble came out. He’d worked on it for over a year, so he had a nervous breakdown and quit.’
This is the great terror of enameling. Yes, on the one hand, you have to have the patience of a saint; yes, you need nerves of steel and a steady hand; yes, you have to be blessed with rare artistic talent; but above all, you have to be able to live with the fear that the very process that perfects your work can just as soon destroy it. And that there’s nothing you can do about it.
Stern moves on to talking about Grand Feu miniature enameling, the art’s highest form, one Patek is renowned for – and one he says is dying out.
He says it takes 20 years as an apprentice to even come close to being a Grand Feu miniature enameller, and that today the art is only mastered by Suzanne Rohr, the doyenne who’s worked exclusively for Patek for the last four years. But Rohr is getting older. Stern thinks she’s about 70, but he’s not sure. As her eyesight deteriorates with age, she’s slowing down, he says, meaning a piece that once took her a year now takes two.
Stern recounts a story to illustrate Rohr’s peculiar talent. ‘Suzanne was late on a piece once,’ he says. ‘She said she had a problem painting the eyes on a dog. I looked at the enameling on the pocket watch and I asked her, “where is the dog?” The dog was so small you couldn’t see it ¬– so imagine how small the eyes of the dog were.’
Rohr’s apprentice is the prodigiously talented Anita Porchet, the most in-demand of today’s top enamellers and the artisan behind Vacheron Constantin’s Florilège collection. In Stern’s words, Rohr and Porchet are the last of the art’s leading lights – and even then, he feels Porchet will not reach Rohr’s heights. Rohr, he says, will be the last master, with no one in the wings to take over.
‘Young people are not ready to do a 20-year apprenticeship,’ he says. ‘And today, there’s no school. In the past, there was a school in Geneva teaching enameling, but not now. It’s over.’
Patek, under the leadership of the Stern family, has appointed itself as the grand preserver of enameling. From dome clocks to pocket watches to the new Sky Moon Tourbillon to more familiar pieces like the cloisonné Ref 5131 world timer, there are numerous examples of enameling within the brand’s métiers d’art collection.
Stern is keen to point out preservation and personal passion are the only motivators here. Patek doesn’t promote its métiers d’art pieces (they’re not shown to the press in Basel), it doesn’t fete its craftsmen (or even make their names public for fear they’ll be poached by rival brands), and, according to Stern, the company doesn’t make them for the money either. ‘With these kind of pieces, if you don’t enjoy doing them – don’t do them,’ he says frankly. ‘If you’re doing them just to do business, don’t.’
For him, it’s about capturing and recording something that one day no one will be able to do any more. ‘That’s how we can preserve the knowledge,’ he says.
As the art dies out, collectors are picking up the scent. Stern claims that not long ago his father, Philippe Stern, could hold 80 dome clocks in stock at any one time. Now, by comparison, he has 600 requests for every 10 clocks Patek makes. And auction prices for these pieces – when they come up – are rising all the time.
The last Grand Feu miniature enamel piece can’t then be far away? ‘Suzanne came to us with a piece she’s been working on for two years recently,’ says Stern a little mournfully. ‘My father looked at it and I asked him what he’ll do with it when it’s finished. He said, “Nothing – to whom am I going to sell one piece made by the last master?” So, it’ll go into the Patek museum so that at least everybody can see it. It’s a dying art and there’s nothing you can do.’
In this day and age of seemingly endless possibility, that has a curious, even haunting ring to it.
