SJX was insightful talking about this on his latest podcast; a point he has made before is that there is a raft of time-only independents where the whole point is the hand-finishing (ie there is nothing technically interesting about the movement) and that’s just not that interesting anymore.
It is clearly what the market wants, but it is a different time now than when Dufour did it with the Simplicity (which falls 100% in to the category of good but pretty standard time-only movement beautifully decorated).
I have a lot of sympathy with his view. I’m much more interested in horological innovation than I am in Swiss-style hand-finishing.
thanks for the recommendation on this -- finally listened, and to some of his other podcast episodes. always insightful. generally agree with his take on finishing, too.
I think that, for a few years, watchmaking has mostly been looking backwards. Artisanal, handcraft, etc. This isn't good or bad, but I wonder. Where did the "innovation" of Franck Muller, Richard Mille, etc. of the previous generation go? Perhaps it's there and it's just not focused on in "mainstream" discourse right now. This is the trend I found so interesting and why I asked Nabil to write this piece!
The reductio ad absurdum on this argument is right here: "But real hand-finishing is done entirely with manual tools like files and wood pegs, producing subtle, organic variations that machines can’t replicate."
I own an A. Schumann "precise drilling machine," effectively a jeweler's drill press from 1890. A. Schumann relocated from Dusseldorf to Racine, WI in 1939 for all the reasons you'd expect and became Precise Manufacturing, the pre-eminent rotary tool globally. Rockwell bought Precise in 1969 and then sold it to Fischer SFJ in 2006, the manufacturer of precision spindles used by Kern, Bumotec and others. It was state-of-the-art in 1890, and modern state-of-the-art tools can trace their lineage directly to it. The barriers to entry are unchanged and prices were comparable.
I own it because the former owner couldn't get it to spin reliably under power - something something 130-year-old babbitt bearings something something. He wanted to do perlage with it, and couldn't. Perlage ("engine turning" for those outside the niche tradition of watch finishing) simply can't be done in a reasonable fashion without reasonable RPM and life is too short. This is a guy who sinks hundreds of hours into his watches and he noped the hell out.
How is it that "real hand finishing" is done entirely with manual tools, yet perlage *can't* reasonably be done entirely with manual tools?
At a baseline, luxury item pricing = (("cost per hour per craftsman" x "hours worked") + ("material inputs") x ("markup")) x ("duty coefficient"). The material inputs on a gold Rolex and a gold Dufour aren't wildly different, nor are the "cost per hour per craftsman" - Dufour is doing it all himself and Rolex is dozens of craftsmen but technicians at the same level of proficiency can do the same work in the same amount of time. The real difference is some indie is gonna spend 40 hours per dial doing hand guilloche on a 140-year-old Lienhard while Patek is gonna feed it into their $750k S191V and call it a day.
The differences are this:
1) The indie guy doesn't have to drop three quarters of a mil on a 9-axis mill-turn
2) The LVMH house can clobber the indie on price through economies of scale
The hand-finishing fetish is an outcome of Kickstarter, not Instagram. Swiss (not American) watches have long been a parts bin of different cottage industries assembled under a single name of origin and the advent of AliExpress allowed a Cambrian explosion of internet simps cobbling together Another Damn Diver out of a dozen Shenzen parts houses to pimp on social media. The only way to differentiate one Lego watch from another Lego watch was to put some hand-lovin' on it and it doesn't take much in the way of tooling to "hand finish" a movement. The end result was the ever-credible watch press parroting marketing copy, the ever-credible watch enthusiast community parroting the watch press, and chin-stroking arguments about how much "hand" is necessary in "hand finishing" when ultimately, "visible hand-finished angles and polished screws for under $2000" is about market differentiation rather than quality.
Is a custom cannon pinion somehow worth more if the watchmaker's lathe is turned with a foot treadle rather than a sewing machine motor? C'mon now.
I leave you with this: Audemars fetishizing their mechanization to the point of pr0n.
thanks for the comment, and a fair push back in there. A lot to unpack otherwise - glad the famous royal oak tapisserie video made an appearance at the end!
On perlage, aka stippling, aka spotting, Britten's Watch & Clockmaker's Handbook (1898) has this to say: "Spotting: the process of finishing chronometer, and occasionally watch plates by polishing thereon equidistant circular patches.
"The plate that is to be spotted is fixed to the top of a slide rest, and the marks are made with a small bone or ivory tube, which screws into the bottom of the upright spindle. The material used to produce the pattern is a mixture of oilstone dust and sharp red-stuff. The plate, when fixed in position on the platform of the tool, is dabbed all over with the end of the finger dipped into this composition, which must not be at all dry or thick. This upright spindle carrying the spotter is kept constantly rotating by a band from a foot wheel. A spiral spring round the arbor of the spotter keeps it off the work, and a little pressure on a knob at the top brings the spotter into action. The pattern is made by turning the handle of the slide rest equal amounts after each spot 'till a row is finished, and then movement the transverse slide an amount equal to the pitch of the pattern."
So perlage clearly can be done with manual tools, although even in 1898 I suspect a sensible watchmaker would have preferred your Schuman drilling machine (which I'm assuming had an electric motor, although that may not be correct since electric drills were only invented about eight years earlier). I've seen perlage being applied by CNC machines and I've had a go at doing it manually with a drill press at a couple of workshops, but I have never seen or heard of anyone stubborn enough to try to do it with hand press and foot pedal. I wouldn't want to try it. I'm not sure a foot treadle powered machine under entirely manual control fits your definition of "manual tools" though.
For "small bone or ivory tube" substitute "cratex stick" and "band from a foot wheel" substitute "anything else" and not a lot has changed. My Schumann came to me partial but it looked set up for a hand crank so I printed one. You could maybe drive it with a watchmaker's lathe motor if you were inventive but I'm not sure it was ever designed for any real speed.
I learned to sew with a foot treadle; other than the inertia it's not horribly different from an electric machine. The presence of a foot treadle, however, makes it a "pedual," rather than "manual" tool, at least partially! ;-)
So, let me ask you something. Let's say you have a movement plate decorated with perlage/spotting. Beyond a certain point (and you don't even have to go that far) the result is basically the same, no matter if you're using a foot treadle operated press with an ivory rod hand-charged with red stuff, or a Dremel Moto Tool, or a multi-axis CNC machine; your inputs are vastly different but the outputs are as similar as never mind (allowing for the fact that the most manual process probably has irregularities that are visible if you know what to look for). So, what should people care about? "Should" is a weasel word here, obviously, but isn't a lot of watch knowledge about appreciating that it's just as much how you do it as what you do?
People should care about what they desire to care about. We call them luxury goods, not utility goods, and if someone has their heart set on a watch made without electricity I sincerely hope they can find craftsmen to serve them. More than that, "how much handwork goes into it" is an entirely reasonable and commendable consideration upon which to base one's affinities. I can respect the hard work an indie brand puts into their handwork while also respecting the mechanized precision of a Rolex.
"What should people are about" can't help but be subjective and individual to that person. It's a very different discussion than whether or not "Hand finishing became the next complication" as if black-polished screws were of a kind with a power reserve or a tourbillon. "Does it have a microrotor" is an objective question with a binary answer while "has the movement been massaged enough to justify the expense" is a subjective question with no metrics to speak of, as Tony mentioned.
I care not a whit if *somebody* cares how hand-decorated their watch movement is. My hackles rise when it's implied *everybody* should care. There's already more than enough fakery masquerading as authenticity in the watch business and the suggestion that everyone should pretend to hand-chamfer their bridges for purposes of puffery is erosive to the craft, damaging to the industry, insulting to the customer and a dangerous trend to encourage.
Great post! I think we all have come to the conclusion that mechanical watches are less relied on for time keeping and more canvases of artistic expression that does something for the observer/owner. With the dial being the traditional canvas, finishing in the modern era seems to be simply flipping the painting over and adding more art. Personally, I would like to see a Banksy work on a manhole cover with côtes de genève on the flip side.
My .02 is that this phenomenon is largely due to individual watchmakers placing great emphasis on their handiwork as a way to distinguish themselves in an increasingly crowded marketplace, rather than buyers who demand a certain amount and level of handiwork on bridges and other components in a movement or case. It’s a feature that is an element of a well-made watch, but not the end all and be all of the finished product.
I view this in the same way I view bracing on an acoustic guitar. On the best instruments, bracing is hand-shaped and finished and you can see the difference compared with a lower level mass produced guitar. But I suspect few buyers will focus on the bracing as the main criterion of quality. It’s the sound, feel, woods used, playability, etc. that matter.
i do agree that watchmakers, indies in particular, place an emphasis on this because it's a way to differentiate from large brands. but i think that buyers now demand it. chicken/egg as to which came first
I liken some of the good feels hand finishing provides to the pitch my Tiffany sales associate used on me when I bought my wife’s engagement ring…The “pride of ownership” spiel he convinced me of: I mean, apart from you and your wife-to-be, will anyone know her diamond is VVS1 or VVS2 - or VS1 or VS2 for that matter? Not likely. Unless you broadcast it of course.
If the machine-esque (hand-guided?) finishing is close in quality via loupe to the old school techniques - at a much lower cost…I’ll take it. That said,, I’d have to see the total package…maybe my pride of ownership goals would kick in.🤪
funny enough, someone just sent me this article about de beers' strategy towards lab-grown diamonds (link below)—since it has obvious parallels to watches—and it is not dissimilar to this discussion.
I do agree, to an extent. One distinct memory I have from my first visit to a Swiss watch manufacturer is that the brand kept bragging about how they were still doing many processes in the same way they were 40-60 years ago. It's not hard to observe inefficiencies, and indeed this can be part of the charm, but also: you haven't even tried to find a better way??
Speaking as a trained gemologist, the price of diamonds has been artificially inflated by De Beers for decades. They watched in realtime what Mikimoto did to pearls and reefed to just this side of criminal (mostly) to prevent a similar dilution. De Beers spent more money marketing *against* Ed Zwick's "Blood Diamond" than Warner Brothers spent marketing *for* it.
I can’t read the article behind the paywall…I only subscribe to a select number of online pubs - like yours Tony 😉 how does De Beers respond to lab grown diamonds?
Now I am thinking of another parallel process with charming inefficiencies - bespoke shoemaking! Everyone one suggests 3d modeling and printing to replace the wooden “lasts” wooden hand-carved models of your feet…Some firms are experimenting with new tech as a way to refer back for measurements…but old school makers use / reuse wooden lasts when they stretch and nail leather to create your shoes. Guessing 3D printed lasts wouldn’t hold up - for now!
As a side note, De Beers just shut down Lightbox, its lab grown diamond division, subsequent to the collapse in lab grown diamond prices, which sell at a tiny fraction of the price of mined diamonds (whose price has also dropped significantly) https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/luxury/de-beers-closing-diamond-jewellery/
Well - hopefully - my diamond buying days are over. I’ll just give my son my 2 cents…when the time comes 😉 maybe I’ll suggest a lab grown diamond paired with an automatic watch with a hand engraved movement!
Once upon a time we were satisfied with hand engraved balance cocks. Now that just isn’t enough, need all our interior angles to receive the expert gentle yet firm touch of human hands to feel truly fulfilled
Great write-up, thank you. Another aspect is that hand-finishing makes a lot of sense in deliberate movement architecture. There is a clarity to what the guys at Armin Strom do, for example. At Watches & Wonders the nice people at Chopard showed me a skeletonized and well-finished LUC. It was a marvel of engineering, but not exactly pretty to look at.
I love Open Work watches. A Logical One from Romain Gauthier is a marvel. The finishing matters, but only when it is visibly poorly done. In his case the watches are beautiful, but I'm there to see the chain, not the angles on the bridge.
yes, well said. the meaning of well-executed, purposeful hand finishing is worth further exploration. finishing for its own sake is less interesting (to me, at least)
Laurent Ferrier is an example of finishing as an aspect of "a watch done well", as opposed to finishing for the sake of finishing.
This is why I am not terribly miffed about LF not having 8 interior angles on the Classic Moonphase, whereas they do on the Classic Micro-Rotor (Cal FB229.01). See - it was never about the interior angles, it was about a purity of vision - and if interior angles naturally fall into the vision, so be it.
This is also why I believe brands such as Berneron will be successful. The Mirage 38 and 34 again don't have many interior angles, but the Mirage is one of the purest tones of a dress watch we have today, with character and creativity to boot.
very well said. of course, i'm a big fan of both LF and Berneron and their entire philosophy and approach to watchmaking, and the realization of a single man's vision. and neither involves the pursuit of finishing for its own sake, as you say.
Timely article as more watches get sapphire case backs and even very affordable watches have very nicely decorated if not finished movements (and certainly not “hand-finished” however that is actually defined. Its usually a hand holding the stick, grit paper, file, buffer or drill, depending where you want to draw the line, but it should at least eliminate die cast, molded, stamped, cnc applied etc. As an aside, I heard that the reason Patek has not gone more in on synthetic parts is that among other reasons although they can look nice and be technically more functional, there is not much you can do to polish or embellish.
Two perspectives however.
First: These techniques came from pocket watch makers in the earliest days when they were enormously expensive and jolly well would be seen by their rich clients, and I say rich as originally if you were not you could not afford such a creation, and many had to be opened to be wound even for the uncurious. There was no question of power tools as there were none. Everything was perforce done with hand tools which pre-industrialisation would also have pretty much been made by hand as well. No sheets of uniform graded sandpaper.
Second: I at least always understood that the finishing was meant to be functional, intended to improve fit and reducing friction, retard oxydation, and in the case of things like waves and stripes, attempt to trap some of the dust invariably floating into movements and better caught in micro grooves than teeth and lubricant. Until parts became much more precisely made, better coatings were developed and cases made more dust proof, let alone water resistant, you might as well do the best you could on these fronts since measuring, cutting and milling as well as metallurgy were very hard to improve.
Industrialization eventually made hand work less essential and also created mass demand for what we today call affordable watches as people from all walks had schedules to keep and trains to catch. Lots of cheap watches were produced by the end of the 19th century driven by the Americans. Although we tend to focus on the development of the mechanisms, escapements, and such, there was a long history of manufacturing improvements that enabled this starting from standardized parts and assembly lines with electric power, and simplification and eliminating embellishments were part and parcel. Regulators could provide some compensation for poor running and they met their price points. Finishing or lack thereof was probably the least of such watches timekeeping problems.
But manufacturing was steadily improving, and by the time the wristwatch became a thing, mass produced pocket watches from such companies as Waltham or Omega were producing plain but quite accurate time pieces in large quantities at modest prices compared to the past. All of this was a long way from CAD CAM and every manner of part cutting and forming and choices of materials today. (All of which will be made and built in a clean environment and sealed in a hermetic case only to be opened when it is going to be cleaned or serviced and then in an equally clean environment) but what those industrial pocket watches did demonstrate was that fancy was no longer essential to function leaving fancy for higher price points due to their higher cost and manufacturing complexity.
This fed into the craze for wristwatches in the 20th century and what emerged as the wristwatch market started to take shape in the inter-war era was a class of rather good but unembellished and modestly finished miniaturised watches where time keeping was rather good based on solid workhorse movements and greatly improved quality control. I am wearing a Valjoux 23 at the moment, a minute register small seconds chronograph that first appeared in 1916. It gained a second pusher in 1938 and was produced until 1976 or 1979, I forget. The Valjoux 72 added a 12 hour hand to basically the same movement and was probably one of the greatest manual chronograph movements ever. Although even Patek used the movement they of course would have greatly refinished it to meet their higher standards, but my point is that great timekeepers could be had without the embellishment due to the manufactured reliability and then price point could be staggered between casing, silver, steel or gold, dials and branding. The Patek fine finishing’s effect on time keeping I would have to sincerely question. Mine is a 1950s Ulysse, movement plain as dishwater, keeps great time. If you are asking.
I would posit that pre quartz the real differentiation was not finishing but miniaturised integrated complications. These forced new movement designs which almost because of their expense of design and manufacture had limited paying customers further pushing up unit prices. Think when even moon phases were rare, perpetual or repeater a pipe dream, and even the simplest calendars were a big step up in price. It would make no sense in limiting their appeal by cheapening production standards by eliminating fancy finish and the Trinity remained the Trinity because they did not. Post quartz all was jewellery anyway. To fancy finish for appeal is a market and a price point, and although some of us would rather still nerd out on technical specs and actual time keeping despite the comparative limitations against computers and nuclear clocks, when it comes to jewellery looks are everything, and whether you buy faux, costume, consumer or fine its really just a matter of what you can and choose to afford.
an epic history of the last century or so that reminds me, while there's a current fascination with finishing from many collectors, nothing is new. As you point out, what I've found interesting is that while finishing has its roots in function—reducing friction, catching dust—we're a long way from that, and it's become a way for craftspeople to exhibit craftsmanship. While that's interesting, I also wonder what happens when finishing is pursued as an end in and of itself.
Anyway, thanks for reading and the thoughtful historical context.
Thank you for the long and generous replies to my modest comments as a new subscriber. Absolutely love your articles and look forward to much more as well as catching up with the archive. As for your musing, I think you have answered your own question in your recent article on improvements in watchmaking: as the basics become so good on industrially produced watches fine finishing and decoration becomes an essential part of the price justification for very costly artisanal watch production particularly at the more industrialised/affordable end such as the Trinity, Lange etc. Kind Regards, Paul Shapiro
Ps, was recently invited to see Omega’s ETA staffed movement facility in Villeret. They have a wall in the lobby explaining their evolution of escapements since acquiring the Danial’s patent. 7-8 evolutions of the escapement in 20 years of extraordinary innovation, timekeeping on the latest movements brought within 0 -2 spm. They throw in only a modest degree of finishing, but its hard to argue with the overall value proposition. A Patek chronograph darned better look alot prettier for the difference, and the reputed fact that they spend as many hours finishing single parts as Omega takes to build whole movements should be some comfort to owners of such…
There are those who have an eye for artisanal hand finishing, those who can appreciate well crafted machine finishing, and those who feel it at best superfluous and want to be the taste police. I thought it timely and well written. Keep it up Tony!
Great story Tony and a topic I've been thinking about this last year. As someone in this market, there is no doubt that this level of finishing is ‘required’ for low-production independents. But as they continue to raise their prices to $70k plus for time only watches, and this level of finishing becomes more ubiquitous, I wonder how they will be able to justify these prices when that level of finishing no longer stands out. One answer is a shift back to innovative movements and design. I think Berneron strikes the right notes there and others must be pushed in that direction, I'm talking to you Mr. Ferrier!
Pricing is another matter but goes along with this discussion. As prices rise and well-executed finishing becomes more common, it seems natural that watchmakers would look towards movement, design, etc. to stand out.
Thanks Tony; very informative and a pleasure to read as usual!
I still remember a time when in pop culture the “iced out” bling watch was a flex. I wonder if hand finishing has replaced this a bit now since diamonds have become more common and can even be grown in a lab. The flex is now, “Look how many hours of Swiss manual labour I can afford.”
Funny, elsewhere in these comments I linked an article about De Beers’ struggles. And yes, the current trend towards finishing feels like a literal manifesting of an old-school type of luxury, literally paying for human craft.
Huh, I happened to listen to Episode 34 of Hairspring today where Eric and Max track this transition from complication being the zenith (pun intended) of independent watchmaking to finishing taking that crown.
Worth a listen and a nice complement to this great read.
SJX was insightful talking about this on his latest podcast; a point he has made before is that there is a raft of time-only independents where the whole point is the hand-finishing (ie there is nothing technically interesting about the movement) and that’s just not that interesting anymore.
It is clearly what the market wants, but it is a different time now than when Dufour did it with the Simplicity (which falls 100% in to the category of good but pretty standard time-only movement beautifully decorated).
I have a lot of sympathy with his view. I’m much more interested in horological innovation than I am in Swiss-style hand-finishing.
thanks for the recommendation on this -- finally listened, and to some of his other podcast episodes. always insightful. generally agree with his take on finishing, too.
I think that, for a few years, watchmaking has mostly been looking backwards. Artisanal, handcraft, etc. This isn't good or bad, but I wonder. Where did the "innovation" of Franck Muller, Richard Mille, etc. of the previous generation go? Perhaps it's there and it's just not focused on in "mainstream" discourse right now. This is the trend I found so interesting and why I asked Nabil to write this piece!
The reductio ad absurdum on this argument is right here: "But real hand-finishing is done entirely with manual tools like files and wood pegs, producing subtle, organic variations that machines can’t replicate."
I own an A. Schumann "precise drilling machine," effectively a jeweler's drill press from 1890. A. Schumann relocated from Dusseldorf to Racine, WI in 1939 for all the reasons you'd expect and became Precise Manufacturing, the pre-eminent rotary tool globally. Rockwell bought Precise in 1969 and then sold it to Fischer SFJ in 2006, the manufacturer of precision spindles used by Kern, Bumotec and others. It was state-of-the-art in 1890, and modern state-of-the-art tools can trace their lineage directly to it. The barriers to entry are unchanged and prices were comparable.
I own it because the former owner couldn't get it to spin reliably under power - something something 130-year-old babbitt bearings something something. He wanted to do perlage with it, and couldn't. Perlage ("engine turning" for those outside the niche tradition of watch finishing) simply can't be done in a reasonable fashion without reasonable RPM and life is too short. This is a guy who sinks hundreds of hours into his watches and he noped the hell out.
How is it that "real hand finishing" is done entirely with manual tools, yet perlage *can't* reasonably be done entirely with manual tools?
At a baseline, luxury item pricing = (("cost per hour per craftsman" x "hours worked") + ("material inputs") x ("markup")) x ("duty coefficient"). The material inputs on a gold Rolex and a gold Dufour aren't wildly different, nor are the "cost per hour per craftsman" - Dufour is doing it all himself and Rolex is dozens of craftsmen but technicians at the same level of proficiency can do the same work in the same amount of time. The real difference is some indie is gonna spend 40 hours per dial doing hand guilloche on a 140-year-old Lienhard while Patek is gonna feed it into their $750k S191V and call it a day.
The differences are this:
1) The indie guy doesn't have to drop three quarters of a mil on a 9-axis mill-turn
2) The LVMH house can clobber the indie on price through economies of scale
The hand-finishing fetish is an outcome of Kickstarter, not Instagram. Swiss (not American) watches have long been a parts bin of different cottage industries assembled under a single name of origin and the advent of AliExpress allowed a Cambrian explosion of internet simps cobbling together Another Damn Diver out of a dozen Shenzen parts houses to pimp on social media. The only way to differentiate one Lego watch from another Lego watch was to put some hand-lovin' on it and it doesn't take much in the way of tooling to "hand finish" a movement. The end result was the ever-credible watch press parroting marketing copy, the ever-credible watch enthusiast community parroting the watch press, and chin-stroking arguments about how much "hand" is necessary in "hand finishing" when ultimately, "visible hand-finished angles and polished screws for under $2000" is about market differentiation rather than quality.
Is a custom cannon pinion somehow worth more if the watchmaker's lathe is turned with a foot treadle rather than a sewing machine motor? C'mon now.
I leave you with this: Audemars fetishizing their mechanization to the point of pr0n.
https://youtu.be/K0uW37FnCLM?si=AIM8X8lzpq48IQzj
thanks for the comment, and a fair push back in there. A lot to unpack otherwise - glad the famous royal oak tapisserie video made an appearance at the end!
On perlage, aka stippling, aka spotting, Britten's Watch & Clockmaker's Handbook (1898) has this to say: "Spotting: the process of finishing chronometer, and occasionally watch plates by polishing thereon equidistant circular patches.
"The plate that is to be spotted is fixed to the top of a slide rest, and the marks are made with a small bone or ivory tube, which screws into the bottom of the upright spindle. The material used to produce the pattern is a mixture of oilstone dust and sharp red-stuff. The plate, when fixed in position on the platform of the tool, is dabbed all over with the end of the finger dipped into this composition, which must not be at all dry or thick. This upright spindle carrying the spotter is kept constantly rotating by a band from a foot wheel. A spiral spring round the arbor of the spotter keeps it off the work, and a little pressure on a knob at the top brings the spotter into action. The pattern is made by turning the handle of the slide rest equal amounts after each spot 'till a row is finished, and then movement the transverse slide an amount equal to the pitch of the pattern."
So perlage clearly can be done with manual tools, although even in 1898 I suspect a sensible watchmaker would have preferred your Schuman drilling machine (which I'm assuming had an electric motor, although that may not be correct since electric drills were only invented about eight years earlier). I've seen perlage being applied by CNC machines and I've had a go at doing it manually with a drill press at a couple of workshops, but I have never seen or heard of anyone stubborn enough to try to do it with hand press and foot pedal. I wouldn't want to try it. I'm not sure a foot treadle powered machine under entirely manual control fits your definition of "manual tools" though.
For "small bone or ivory tube" substitute "cratex stick" and "band from a foot wheel" substitute "anything else" and not a lot has changed. My Schumann came to me partial but it looked set up for a hand crank so I printed one. You could maybe drive it with a watchmaker's lathe motor if you were inventive but I'm not sure it was ever designed for any real speed.
I learned to sew with a foot treadle; other than the inertia it's not horribly different from an electric machine. The presence of a foot treadle, however, makes it a "pedual," rather than "manual" tool, at least partially! ;-)
So, let me ask you something. Let's say you have a movement plate decorated with perlage/spotting. Beyond a certain point (and you don't even have to go that far) the result is basically the same, no matter if you're using a foot treadle operated press with an ivory rod hand-charged with red stuff, or a Dremel Moto Tool, or a multi-axis CNC machine; your inputs are vastly different but the outputs are as similar as never mind (allowing for the fact that the most manual process probably has irregularities that are visible if you know what to look for). So, what should people care about? "Should" is a weasel word here, obviously, but isn't a lot of watch knowledge about appreciating that it's just as much how you do it as what you do?
People should care about what they desire to care about. We call them luxury goods, not utility goods, and if someone has their heart set on a watch made without electricity I sincerely hope they can find craftsmen to serve them. More than that, "how much handwork goes into it" is an entirely reasonable and commendable consideration upon which to base one's affinities. I can respect the hard work an indie brand puts into their handwork while also respecting the mechanized precision of a Rolex.
"What should people are about" can't help but be subjective and individual to that person. It's a very different discussion than whether or not "Hand finishing became the next complication" as if black-polished screws were of a kind with a power reserve or a tourbillon. "Does it have a microrotor" is an objective question with a binary answer while "has the movement been massaged enough to justify the expense" is a subjective question with no metrics to speak of, as Tony mentioned.
I care not a whit if *somebody* cares how hand-decorated their watch movement is. My hackles rise when it's implied *everybody* should care. There's already more than enough fakery masquerading as authenticity in the watch business and the suggestion that everyone should pretend to hand-chamfer their bridges for purposes of puffery is erosive to the craft, damaging to the industry, insulting to the customer and a dangerous trend to encourage.
Great post! I think we all have come to the conclusion that mechanical watches are less relied on for time keeping and more canvases of artistic expression that does something for the observer/owner. With the dial being the traditional canvas, finishing in the modern era seems to be simply flipping the painting over and adding more art. Personally, I would like to see a Banksy work on a manhole cover with côtes de genève on the flip side.
Yes exactly, a natural evolution of the wristwatch from tool to luxury, and human handcraft (ie time) is perhaps the ultimate luxury.
My .02 is that this phenomenon is largely due to individual watchmakers placing great emphasis on their handiwork as a way to distinguish themselves in an increasingly crowded marketplace, rather than buyers who demand a certain amount and level of handiwork on bridges and other components in a movement or case. It’s a feature that is an element of a well-made watch, but not the end all and be all of the finished product.
I view this in the same way I view bracing on an acoustic guitar. On the best instruments, bracing is hand-shaped and finished and you can see the difference compared with a lower level mass produced guitar. But I suspect few buyers will focus on the bracing as the main criterion of quality. It’s the sound, feel, woods used, playability, etc. that matter.
i do agree that watchmakers, indies in particular, place an emphasis on this because it's a way to differentiate from large brands. but i think that buyers now demand it. chicken/egg as to which came first
I’m not in the category of buyers who do, but I get it. Thanks for another thoughtful and well written article.
I liken some of the good feels hand finishing provides to the pitch my Tiffany sales associate used on me when I bought my wife’s engagement ring…The “pride of ownership” spiel he convinced me of: I mean, apart from you and your wife-to-be, will anyone know her diamond is VVS1 or VVS2 - or VS1 or VS2 for that matter? Not likely. Unless you broadcast it of course.
If the machine-esque (hand-guided?) finishing is close in quality via loupe to the old school techniques - at a much lower cost…I’ll take it. That said,, I’d have to see the total package…maybe my pride of ownership goals would kick in.🤪
funny enough, someone just sent me this article about de beers' strategy towards lab-grown diamonds (link below)—since it has obvious parallels to watches—and it is not dissimilar to this discussion.
I do agree, to an extent. One distinct memory I have from my first visit to a Swiss watch manufacturer is that the brand kept bragging about how they were still doing many processes in the same way they were 40-60 years ago. It's not hard to observe inefficiencies, and indeed this can be part of the charm, but also: you haven't even tried to find a better way??
https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/de-beers-diamonds-price-lab-grown-468b33ab
Speaking as a trained gemologist, the price of diamonds has been artificially inflated by De Beers for decades. They watched in realtime what Mikimoto did to pearls and reefed to just this side of criminal (mostly) to prevent a similar dilution. De Beers spent more money marketing *against* Ed Zwick's "Blood Diamond" than Warner Brothers spent marketing *for* it.
I can’t read the article behind the paywall…I only subscribe to a select number of online pubs - like yours Tony 😉 how does De Beers respond to lab grown diamonds?
Now I am thinking of another parallel process with charming inefficiencies - bespoke shoemaking! Everyone one suggests 3d modeling and printing to replace the wooden “lasts” wooden hand-carved models of your feet…Some firms are experimenting with new tech as a way to refer back for measurements…but old school makers use / reuse wooden lasts when they stretch and nail leather to create your shoes. Guessing 3D printed lasts wouldn’t hold up - for now!
paid subs get gift WSJ links sometimes...
https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/de-beers-diamonds-price-lab-grown-468b33ab?st=ixRDfm&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
As a side note, De Beers just shut down Lightbox, its lab grown diamond division, subsequent to the collapse in lab grown diamond prices, which sell at a tiny fraction of the price of mined diamonds (whose price has also dropped significantly) https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/luxury/de-beers-closing-diamond-jewellery/
Thanks Tony…
So De Beers is banking on emphasizing rarity, and value retention - among a few other attributes. Sounds like (steel) Rolex!
De Beers is banking on "diamonds they control" vs "diamonds they don't"
Well - hopefully - my diamond buying days are over. I’ll just give my son my 2 cents…when the time comes 😉 maybe I’ll suggest a lab grown diamond paired with an automatic watch with a hand engraved movement!
Once upon a time we were satisfied with hand engraved balance cocks. Now that just isn’t enough, need all our interior angles to receive the expert gentle yet firm touch of human hands to feel truly fulfilled
Great write-up, thank you. Another aspect is that hand-finishing makes a lot of sense in deliberate movement architecture. There is a clarity to what the guys at Armin Strom do, for example. At Watches & Wonders the nice people at Chopard showed me a skeletonized and well-finished LUC. It was a marvel of engineering, but not exactly pretty to look at.
I love Open Work watches. A Logical One from Romain Gauthier is a marvel. The finishing matters, but only when it is visibly poorly done. In his case the watches are beautiful, but I'm there to see the chain, not the angles on the bridge.
yes, well said. the meaning of well-executed, purposeful hand finishing is worth further exploration. finishing for its own sake is less interesting (to me, at least)
Laurent Ferrier is an example of finishing as an aspect of "a watch done well", as opposed to finishing for the sake of finishing.
This is why I am not terribly miffed about LF not having 8 interior angles on the Classic Moonphase, whereas they do on the Classic Micro-Rotor (Cal FB229.01). See - it was never about the interior angles, it was about a purity of vision - and if interior angles naturally fall into the vision, so be it.
This is also why I believe brands such as Berneron will be successful. The Mirage 38 and 34 again don't have many interior angles, but the Mirage is one of the purest tones of a dress watch we have today, with character and creativity to boot.
very well said. of course, i'm a big fan of both LF and Berneron and their entire philosophy and approach to watchmaking, and the realization of a single man's vision. and neither involves the pursuit of finishing for its own sake, as you say.
This is one of the most fascinating topics you’ve tackled!
thanks huey
Timely article as more watches get sapphire case backs and even very affordable watches have very nicely decorated if not finished movements (and certainly not “hand-finished” however that is actually defined. Its usually a hand holding the stick, grit paper, file, buffer or drill, depending where you want to draw the line, but it should at least eliminate die cast, molded, stamped, cnc applied etc. As an aside, I heard that the reason Patek has not gone more in on synthetic parts is that among other reasons although they can look nice and be technically more functional, there is not much you can do to polish or embellish.
Two perspectives however.
First: These techniques came from pocket watch makers in the earliest days when they were enormously expensive and jolly well would be seen by their rich clients, and I say rich as originally if you were not you could not afford such a creation, and many had to be opened to be wound even for the uncurious. There was no question of power tools as there were none. Everything was perforce done with hand tools which pre-industrialisation would also have pretty much been made by hand as well. No sheets of uniform graded sandpaper.
Second: I at least always understood that the finishing was meant to be functional, intended to improve fit and reducing friction, retard oxydation, and in the case of things like waves and stripes, attempt to trap some of the dust invariably floating into movements and better caught in micro grooves than teeth and lubricant. Until parts became much more precisely made, better coatings were developed and cases made more dust proof, let alone water resistant, you might as well do the best you could on these fronts since measuring, cutting and milling as well as metallurgy were very hard to improve.
Industrialization eventually made hand work less essential and also created mass demand for what we today call affordable watches as people from all walks had schedules to keep and trains to catch. Lots of cheap watches were produced by the end of the 19th century driven by the Americans. Although we tend to focus on the development of the mechanisms, escapements, and such, there was a long history of manufacturing improvements that enabled this starting from standardized parts and assembly lines with electric power, and simplification and eliminating embellishments were part and parcel. Regulators could provide some compensation for poor running and they met their price points. Finishing or lack thereof was probably the least of such watches timekeeping problems.
But manufacturing was steadily improving, and by the time the wristwatch became a thing, mass produced pocket watches from such companies as Waltham or Omega were producing plain but quite accurate time pieces in large quantities at modest prices compared to the past. All of this was a long way from CAD CAM and every manner of part cutting and forming and choices of materials today. (All of which will be made and built in a clean environment and sealed in a hermetic case only to be opened when it is going to be cleaned or serviced and then in an equally clean environment) but what those industrial pocket watches did demonstrate was that fancy was no longer essential to function leaving fancy for higher price points due to their higher cost and manufacturing complexity.
This fed into the craze for wristwatches in the 20th century and what emerged as the wristwatch market started to take shape in the inter-war era was a class of rather good but unembellished and modestly finished miniaturised watches where time keeping was rather good based on solid workhorse movements and greatly improved quality control. I am wearing a Valjoux 23 at the moment, a minute register small seconds chronograph that first appeared in 1916. It gained a second pusher in 1938 and was produced until 1976 or 1979, I forget. The Valjoux 72 added a 12 hour hand to basically the same movement and was probably one of the greatest manual chronograph movements ever. Although even Patek used the movement they of course would have greatly refinished it to meet their higher standards, but my point is that great timekeepers could be had without the embellishment due to the manufactured reliability and then price point could be staggered between casing, silver, steel or gold, dials and branding. The Patek fine finishing’s effect on time keeping I would have to sincerely question. Mine is a 1950s Ulysse, movement plain as dishwater, keeps great time. If you are asking.
I would posit that pre quartz the real differentiation was not finishing but miniaturised integrated complications. These forced new movement designs which almost because of their expense of design and manufacture had limited paying customers further pushing up unit prices. Think when even moon phases were rare, perpetual or repeater a pipe dream, and even the simplest calendars were a big step up in price. It would make no sense in limiting their appeal by cheapening production standards by eliminating fancy finish and the Trinity remained the Trinity because they did not. Post quartz all was jewellery anyway. To fancy finish for appeal is a market and a price point, and although some of us would rather still nerd out on technical specs and actual time keeping despite the comparative limitations against computers and nuclear clocks, when it comes to jewellery looks are everything, and whether you buy faux, costume, consumer or fine its really just a matter of what you can and choose to afford.
an epic history of the last century or so that reminds me, while there's a current fascination with finishing from many collectors, nothing is new. As you point out, what I've found interesting is that while finishing has its roots in function—reducing friction, catching dust—we're a long way from that, and it's become a way for craftspeople to exhibit craftsmanship. While that's interesting, I also wonder what happens when finishing is pursued as an end in and of itself.
Anyway, thanks for reading and the thoughtful historical context.
Thank you for the long and generous replies to my modest comments as a new subscriber. Absolutely love your articles and look forward to much more as well as catching up with the archive. As for your musing, I think you have answered your own question in your recent article on improvements in watchmaking: as the basics become so good on industrially produced watches fine finishing and decoration becomes an essential part of the price justification for very costly artisanal watch production particularly at the more industrialised/affordable end such as the Trinity, Lange etc. Kind Regards, Paul Shapiro
Ps, was recently invited to see Omega’s ETA staffed movement facility in Villeret. They have a wall in the lobby explaining their evolution of escapements since acquiring the Danial’s patent. 7-8 evolutions of the escapement in 20 years of extraordinary innovation, timekeeping on the latest movements brought within 0 -2 spm. They throw in only a modest degree of finishing, but its hard to argue with the overall value proposition. A Patek chronograph darned better look alot prettier for the difference, and the reputed fact that they spend as many hours finishing single parts as Omega takes to build whole movements should be some comfort to owners of such…
There are those who have an eye for artisanal hand finishing, those who can appreciate well crafted machine finishing, and those who feel it at best superfluous and want to be the taste police. I thought it timely and well written. Keep it up Tony!
What are some examples of “other forms of watchmaking” that are at risk to this obsession with hand finishing?
Less focus on technical or engineering side of things, perhaps. Less focus on expression through design.
Great story Tony and a topic I've been thinking about this last year. As someone in this market, there is no doubt that this level of finishing is ‘required’ for low-production independents. But as they continue to raise their prices to $70k plus for time only watches, and this level of finishing becomes more ubiquitous, I wonder how they will be able to justify these prices when that level of finishing no longer stands out. One answer is a shift back to innovative movements and design. I think Berneron strikes the right notes there and others must be pushed in that direction, I'm talking to you Mr. Ferrier!
Pricing is another matter but goes along with this discussion. As prices rise and well-executed finishing becomes more common, it seems natural that watchmakers would look towards movement, design, etc. to stand out.
Thanks Tony; very informative and a pleasure to read as usual!
I still remember a time when in pop culture the “iced out” bling watch was a flex. I wonder if hand finishing has replaced this a bit now since diamonds have become more common and can even be grown in a lab. The flex is now, “Look how many hours of Swiss manual labour I can afford.”
Funny, elsewhere in these comments I linked an article about De Beers’ struggles. And yes, the current trend towards finishing feels like a literal manifesting of an old-school type of luxury, literally paying for human craft.
Huh, I happened to listen to Episode 34 of Hairspring today where Eric and Max track this transition from complication being the zenith (pun intended) of independent watchmaking to finishing taking that crown.
Worth a listen and a nice complement to this great read.
Ah interesting. I need to listen again but this sounds like a similar idea/observation.
A properly poised balance wheel is more important yet totally unappreciated
true!