The Man Behind The Movement

Titanium Collection Ref. No. A5002/1:  Double Rotor, Calibre P-181,Central hour, minute and second hand, date window at 6’o’clock

History is a funny thing. No one can deny its impact on today’s life, and yet, no one can point to it and say, there. There is history. History is collective memory, and just as individual memory can play tricks on you, collective memory can be not only subjective but actually entirely fabricated. How many memories do you have from your childhood that are actually memories formed from being told a story over and over by your parents? The story becomes the memory in your mind, becomes your memory of the event itself. And whether it’s true or not – how can you tell? How can you ever know? Who do you ask? This isn’t The Truman Show. There are no recorded copies of your life on file, no video vault to which you might refer. You could ask your parents, or your siblings, but their memories might be entirely different. Certainly they will be as subjective as yours. So do you just get by on what you remember, and not try to question too deeply, knowing that after all there can be no definitive answer? Do you just put it on the list of things to ask God if and when you ever make it to Heaven? It seems strange to wait your whole life and come before the Throne of God and, sandwiched in among those questions of who shot JFK and why are there famines, to say, hey, who really did break that window in our old house?

Regulator with retrograde hours, date by hand, automatic movementMemory is frangible. Research, doubly so. Much of the time, one can only trace the truth of a statement back to other statements. Are those true? How can we know? It’s enough to make you wish for an all-knowing expert, hovering around you, invisibly waiting to be asked questions.

One of the most interesting things about watchmaking, to me, has always been that the great achievements in the field have all come from such a small enclosed area, geographically speaking. In these days of the internet and simultaneous research and information sharing on a global scale, we have sort of grown accustomed to the idea of Marshall McLuhan’s global village. Our television sets are assembled in Korea, our shirts are woven in the Congo but stitched together in the Dominican Republic, our tobacco is grown in one time zone but rolled in another. It gives the sense of a giant moving net, with tendrils reaching into the very farthest corners of the globe. But once upon a time, all the best men in the field of watchmaking all knew each other. They were, literally, neighbors. They lived, worked and died within a few square miles. If one of them had a great idea, why, they all heard about it. Likely they apprenticed with one another and swapped stories at Christmastime.

Double rotor, P-181 automatic movement, chocolate brown with rosegold indicesSo when I heard about this one fellow, I was naturally intrigued. I looked deeper, and I was rewarded with the kind of personal stories that, at least, ring true. As near as I can tell from a half a world and two hundred and thirty years away. And more than that, they’re backed by official verification. And I’m glad they are, because it’s an interesting peek into the beginnings of a field which has come to mean a lot to me – and to you, if you are reading this.

About two hundred and eighty years ago, on January 9, 1729, Abraham-Louis Perrelet was born in the municipality of Le Locle. The area is found in the Neuchatel Mountains, and as can be expected from a Swiss mountainside setting, the winters are cold enough to freeze the blood. But the members of the Perrelet family were no strangers to the land, or to living off of it. Abraham- Louis’ father Daniel was a farmer and a carpenter, and no one is closer to the seasons than those who must coax a living from the earth. The farm in winter time was mostly a place of hibernation: no crops can grow in the frozen soil, and the livestock must be kept fed, kept warm and kept close, lest they wander off into the nights of ice, perhaps to be found months later when it thaws. It might happen that you stay indoors much of the winter, and during this time the Perrelet family devoted themselves to the other trade of the household, the one that would eventually set Abraham-Louis Perrelet down his path in life. For Daniel Perrelet was also a toolmaker. He made and maintained the working implements that any working farm must use and wear out every year, but he also made other tools, for the craftsmen who lived down the way. Precision tools that were used by the precision craftsmen of the watchmaking trade.

Abraham-Louis was fascinated by the instruments; in time, he followed his fascination to become first a maker of watchmaking tools, and then a watchmaker himself. He was both an innovator and a refiner, creating new processes and then perfecting them, to improve the workings of the mechanical action within a timepiece. In Le Locle he was the first to produce cylinder escapements, a superior form of escapement that is difficult to manufacture. He also produced duplex escapements, perpetual calendar escapements and equation-of-time ecapements. By all accounts, Abraham-Louis Perrelet was one prolific worker. He would draft the model himself, and then add the escapement, pinions, wheels, winding mechanism and finishing touches.

	Abraham-Louis Perrelet, the inventor of the automatic watch

At a young age, he had already developed a formidable reputation, but apparently not a fearsome one. His colleagues would come to him with frustrating problems in watch making, and it is said he always had a ready answer for anyone in difficulty. He could spot at a glance the flaws which were creating problems for his fellow craftsmen. He trained many men in his workshops, including his own grandson Louis- Frederic Perrelet (who, it will be seen, went on to become noteworthy in his own right) as well as a young Abraham-Louis Breguet.

Hands date, P-171 automatic movement, black with rosegold indicesWhen a craftsman is the type to invent new devices, he will gain the benefits of a creative mind: an original viewpoint, the ability to look at nothing and see the possibilities of what it might become. If, on the other hand, a man works on refining and perfecting the designs of others, he develops other skills: precision; the gift of nuance; the ability to bring the most out of an already existing creation. If a craftsman can do both, well, then he’s going to garner some attention.

Sausurre’s personal notes have survived to this day. In them, he states:

“… from there we went to Mr. Perrelet, the inventor of the watch which self-winds just through the movement of the person carrying it…. He had to make the first model again because he hadn’t installed a stop mechanism and, on one occasion, when the self-winding mechanism was shaken too much by a man running to the post office, it broke the watch. Mr. Perrelet has now integrated an efficient stop mechanism. He had a lot of trouble finding out how to make it, but it works.”

Diamond Flower ref. a2038/1A man, running to a post office, breaking a watch, which Perrelet had first invented and then repaired. A story which comes down to us preserved through the records of the Geneva Arts Society, kept perhaps simply because they were sticklers for such things. A tiny little anecdote, preserved across two hundred and eighty years, so that a piece of history comes to us through a line unbroken.

Speaking of lines unbroken, the Perrelet family kept up the trade of watchmaking in the family. The workshops continued to produce timepieces and to train watchmakers. Louis-Frederic Perrelet, the grandson, continued as a watchmaker himself. He invented marine watches with measuring instruments, and he patented a split second precision chronograph in 1827. In addition, he traveled, set up business in Paris, and went on to become the royal watchmaker to no less than three French kings: Louis XVIII, Charles-X and Louis-Philippe, and was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor. Not bad for a farmer’s great-grandson, you might say. One can certainly imagine his grandfather smiling down with approval.

As for Abraham-Louis Perrelet himself, he remained attached to his roots and his home, that snowy land into which he had been born in the heart of winter. He lived his whole life in the house at the family home in Le Locle, at 5 Cret-Vaillant. His manual dexterity and his love of his work did not fail him in his later years: the International Museum of Horology in La Chaux-de-Fonds has a watch in its collection that Perrelet made in the year of his death – at the age of 96.

Power reserve P-111 automatic movement, silver with rosegold indicesWhat the Perrelet company has to offer us today is their commitment to what they call “accessible luxury”. Their values hold to such ideals as selective distribution, but excellent customer service. One enduring company maxim is a tribute to their founder: all Perrelet watches are fitted with automatic movements. No exceptions.

Skeleton chrono dual tone P-051 automatic movement

Jumping hour P-191 automatic movement, 18 carat rosegold case