Did You Know The World’s Oldest Watchmaker Is…
This is one of the first curiosities budding horologists ask when they get bit by the watch bug. Understanding history makes us foresee the future, it is said. And especially in Swiss watchmaking, the appeal of tradition has been exceptionally strong — in a way like the research of ancient quarters of nobility in the lineage of families.
So, we would like to start by saying that modern watchmaking evolved from clockmaking, and the first prototypes of watches as we know them which still exist to our time are the so-called “Nuremberg Eggs”, a type of small ornamental spring-driven clock made to be worn around the neck, produced in Nuremberg in the mid-to-late 16th century.
A most notable figure manufacturing them was Peter Henlein, who manufactured his first specimens around the first half of 1500.
These primitive watches were not precise at all, and had only one hand to mark the passing of the hours — but were the springboard from which later artisans and clockmakers based upon to modify and improve the basic design of watches.
Sadly, there were no German artisans which brought forward the watchmaking tradition, and so we find that the oldest surviving legacy showed up in Switzerland, about two centuries after.
Blancpain, which is the oldest maison still in activity, has been founded in 1735 in Le Brassus, a town located in the Swiss Jura.
But it has to be said that for a time, the company went dormant, so the watch history purists contest its claim as for being “The oldest watchmaking company in activity”.
And give this hypothetical prize to Vacheron Constantin, which instead hails from 1755 in Geneva and has continuously manufactured watches since its foundation.
So, it depends on how you judge the activity of a company on this peculiar list. If you happen to consider Blancpain the oldest company in the world of horology today, Vacheron Constantin slips not just to the second place, but to the fifth.
The second oldest — and you might be surprised here — is a relatively less known brand, which is Favre-Leuba.
This watch company goes back to 1737, when Abraham Favre (1702–1790) founds a watch workshop in Le Locle, and around 1749, he is appointed ‘Maître horloger du Locle’ (master watchmaker of Le Locle). From then, the company was owned and led by the Favre family for eight generations, before being sold to LVMH in 1978, and ultimately revived 2011 after being purchased by the Tata group.
Just one year later, 1738, marks the birth of the Jaquet Droz company, which was best known for its “Automates”: amazing mechanical automata which displayed the ingenuity and skill of their inventors (and are still visible in the Neuchatel Museum of Arts).
The founder, Pierre Jaquet Droz (1721–1790), was an amazing clockmaker and inventor.
After setting up his watchmaking workshop in 1738, he travelled to several countries to present his creations to nobles and Kings, culminating in an epic trip to Spain in 1758 when he was finally rewarded with a large sum which permitted him to develop his trade globally in the world reaching faraway places like France, England, Russia, and even China.
The last company founded before Vacheron Constantin is a French one: Ferdinand Berthoud (in Paris), in 1753.
Ferdinand was a watchmaker and a scientist, specialized in marine chronometers. He was born on March 18, 1727 in Plancemont-sur-Couvet (Principality of Neuchâtel), and died in Groslay (Val d’Oise) on June 20, 1807.
He became Master Watchmaker in Paris in 1753, and in his career, he held the position of Horologist-Mechanic by appointment to the King and the Navy.
His motto, displayed in some of his watches still surviving to this day, was “Invenit et Fecit”, Latin for “[He] invented it and made it” — a motto that has been recently adopted by the watchmaking wunderkind F.P. Journe.
If we expand our search further to find out which were the first watch companies around the globe, and not only in Switzerland, we come to the conclusion that in the rest of the world, horology arrived much later than this — about a hundred years after.
1845 was the year of the foundation of Lange und Sohne, in Germany. In the US, Waltham was founded in 1850. And in Japan, Seiko (then it was called Seikosha. “House of Excellent Craftmanship”) hails from 1882.
There is a notable absence from this list. Where is the UK?
With such an amazing history in watchmaking that goes back to the 16th century, and the inventions of many watchmakers who contributed greatly to the development of the watch as we know it today, like by Thomas Mudge, who invented the lever escapement around 1755, the sad truth is that there is no historical manufacturer based in the UK left who can compete against the legacy of the brands we have outlined above. The furthest we can go is at the end of the 1800s.
With a notable exception. And I mean, a very notable one — a brand we all know about.
Rolex was founded in London in 1905 (as Wilsdorf and Davis), only to be transferred back to Switzerland in 1919, when Wilsdorf — who was a German — bought the shares of his partner, becoming the sole owner of the firm.
The motivations for this move were several.
First, the after-WWI war taxes levied over imports to the UK, which impacted heavily on Rolex’s business model. During that time, Rolex did not manufacture watches, but just assemble them, importing Swiss movements made by Aegler and encasing them into cases manufactured locally.
Another, not less important one, was that the German surname of the founder had become more a liability than an asset in the post-war climate. So, Wilsdorf went back to neutral Switzerland, turning the “Rolex” brand, which he had registered in 1908, into his company name.
And the rest, my gentle readers, is history.
If you’re looking for a special timepiece of this generation or previous ones, get in touch with us at LuxuryBazaar.com
