Deconstructing History

During a trip to Linz, Austria (pre-lockdown) to visit friends, I was asked what was it like to deconstruct a 200-year-old Breguet, made whilst the brands' namesake was still alive. I'd never given it much thought, partly because I simply felt privileged to have had the opportunity in the first place.

The question made me place reflect upon what I had done or rather, what I had worked on. There is a sense that when a watchmaker works on antique pieces, apart from the reality that the original craftsmen are no longer amongst us, that they lived in a completely different world to our own. A world before CAD and CNC, before electricity and even the invention of the light bulb.

Yet, they developed mechanical solutions that both reflect their ingenuity that lies behind the mechanism and the challenges they faced at that period in history. From solutions to the issues of drying organic lubrication, that would affect the longevity of the movements and consistency of timekeeping. To the development of the Tourbillon that would improve the overall precision of the timepiece.

As we work on these kinds of timepiece, we touch upon the lives of the people that made them, and those people, still live on through their work. The thought processes that lead to the solutions result in physical form, in the shape of the components the movements comprise of. The physical actions of their time spent, shown in the finishing and crafting of each component.

To answer my friends' question, what is was like to deconstruct such a watch; it was a unique and extraordinary experience, it felt like meeting the people who both designed and built it, all under the watchful eye of Breguet himself.