What is your relationship with time?
That's a wonderful question. Personally, I have a peaceful relationship with time. I believe it is what nourishes us. It is the sap flowing through us, the air we breathe. To me, time is life. I have never had any issue with the passing of time, having always appreciated the era in which Ive lived. Nor have I ever had any regrets about the past.
Above all, as a trained historian, my relationship with time is essential since I work with it, moving backwards and forwards through it while drawing comparisons between different periods. Ultimately, being a historian means being a professional of time, so my relationship with time is perfectly healthy. Then there is the measurement of time. Time itself is one thing; measuring it is another.
Speaking of measuring time, a particular historical watch from the late 18th century plays a very important role in the new Tradition collection.
Yes, absolutely. The Tact watch introduced by Breguet in 1799 plays a fundamental role. »
Let's take a deep dive into this historical masterpiece. Where would you like to begin?
Well, Breguet had the idea of inventing a new way of reading time.
Back then time could be read visually or else audibly thanks to repeating watches. Breguet invented a third method that appealed to the sense of touch in what we call Tact watches. In our collection we have magnificent examples that are highly representative of this concept.
On one side, you have the tactile reading system, featuring an arrow serving to tell the time with the help of small beads around the edge.
On the other, there is a cover on the inside that can be lifted to reveal something profoundly illuminating: a glimpse of pure Breguet with an extraordinarily modern appearance, featuring a small subdial at 12 o'clock surrounded by an open-worked movement. It is this aesthetic that gave birth to the contemporary Tradition wristwatch collection, to which this pared-down, minimalist Breguet design was transposed after more than 200 years.
There is also a direct design connection to another historical, even older watch from 1780.
Indeed. The Perpétuelle that also inspired the Tradition collection features a rotor whose shape strongly recalls the earliest examples of this kind of model, meaning the first self-winding watches made by Breguet. While the Tradition thus has dual sources of inspiration, its main cues are obviously from the inner workings of the Tact watch with the small dial and its ingenious movement architecture.
When considering Breguet's fascinating history - with inventions such as the tourbillon, those you have just mentioned, the Breguet hands, the Breguet spring, the Breguet numerals, the pare-chute system, to name but a few - how can one explain why so many of his inventions have endured through the centuries?
That is indeed part of the Breguet magic. Abraham-Louis Breguet's work continues to inspire us and a number of the inventions you mentioned are still with us today, having changed very little over time. So how has this come about? Although one can of course attribute it to the founder's genius, I also explain it through his sense of design. While all Abraham-Louis' creations are art objects, they are also functional, as he always added something useful. In doing so, he truly succeeded in uniting beauty and purpose. He was also a minimalist who simplified everything, yet that required ingenu-ity, because simplification means starting again from the foundations, rethinking everything. He thus did indeed revisit every aspect of watchmaking technique, as well as reconsidering what we would today call design and finishing.
Where did his rethinking lead him?
He removed all excessive decoration; introduced plain cases with- out motifs or ornamentation; as well as eliminating the little flowers and figures commonly found at the time. In short, he cleaned everything up completely. Then came another stroke of genius: namely introducing guilloché in watchmaking, a technique that is extraordinarily beautiful, artistic and also anti-reflective – another example of equal attention being devoted to beauty and utility. To me, all of this explains Breguet’s enduring legacy and for a historian, he is a rare, truly exceptional case. There are not many engineers whose creations are still being made in essentially the same form 200 years later. So, for the historian in me, Breguet remains an extraordinary figure.
