The Watchmaking of F-P. Journe

by Watchbore

November 2002

I. The rise to anonymity

François-Paul Journe is a French watchmaker who was born in Marseilles in 1959. His family came from the Provençal countryside popularized by the writer and filmmaker, Marcel Pagnol. An unruly child, he was sent to a local technical college at the age of 14. He went on to graduate from the Paris watchmaking school in 1976.

His first job was with an uncle, Michel Journe, whose restoration workshops in Paris looked after the major state and private horological collections. Journe had privileged access to some of the world's most important timepieces, particularly from the golden age of horology — the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Journe completed his first watch in 1978, a sprung-detent tourbillon pocket-watch in the manner of Abraham-Louis Breguet. He went on the demonstrate the most difficult horological exercises in a series of one-off pieces in the Breguet style, notably: constant-force tourbillons, an astronomical (planetary) watch, a sympathique clock-watch combination, and a self-winding perpetual-calendar pocket-watch, with fusée-detent escapement and constant-force remontoir, showing retrograde date, moon-phase and equation of time. All Journe's unique pieces are in private collections. His latest, and 10th, watch is a minute-repeating wristwatch with clockwork chiming grand or small strike in passing, retrograde minutes and power reserve indicator, having the repeating work under the caseback and the hammers striking under the dial. It was sold for $400,000 US in 2000.

By the time he opened his own workshops in Paris in 1985, the leading collectors had spotted Journe. His work won awards as well as the respect of the watchmaking's elite, notably Georges Daniels, Anthony Randall, Svend Andersen and others. But by this time wristwatches had replaced pocket-watches in high-value horology.

From 1987, the watchmaking action was in Switzerland and Journe started supplying Swiss luxury brands with much needed horological expertise, designing, prototyping and manufacturing complicated mechanisms. He became partner in a Geneva workshop in 1987, and opened his own workshops, TIM S.A., in 1996. Among his clients were Cartier, Breguet, Piaget, Corum, Asprey, the British Masters, and Harry Winston.

There is an iron rule in the Swiss watch industry that once you start supplying brands, you become anonymous, forbidden to seek recognition, to claim authorship of your inventions or even to identify your clients. However brilliant they may be, those who make the watch can never outrank the brand that markets it.

II. A resonant come-back

Watchbore first met Journe at a Basel Fair cocktail party in 1998. He was accompanied by an attractive dark lady with flashing eyes who drew passing interest, including Watchbore's, to a watch that Journe was showing people. He explained that it had two independent movements and it worked by resonance. He intended to put it into series production under his own name.

This phenomenon, whereby an oscillating object induces another body to vibrate at the same frequency, was reported in 1665 by the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens. As the first to apply sprung balances and pendulums to watches and clocks, Huygens is rightly considered as the founder of modern horology. Since 1662, he had been working for the Royal Society, London, developing pendulum clocks that would work precisely enough at sea to calculate longitude.

His equipment consisted of two heavily weighted clocks suspended from a beam at the bottom of the ship — a necessary redundancy at sea to maintain timekeeping during the maintenance of one or other of the clocks. In 1665, Huygens wrote to the Royal Society, reporting "an odd kind of sympathy between these watches [pendulum clocks] suspended by the side of each other." The pendulums swung with exactly the same frequency and 180 degrees out of phase; when the pendulums were disturbed, the antiphase state was restored within a half-hour and persisted indefinitely.

Resonance caused problems when hyper-accurate scientific clocks were built from the 18th century. A swinging pendulum sets up sympathetic vibrations that affect the rate of the clock. And when the driving weight descends past the pendulum bob, it starts to sway in counterphase, sapping the energy of the pendulum.

It was not until the late 1770s that France's royal clockmaker, Antide Janvier managed to use this disturbing phenomenon to enhance precision. He built at least three regulator clocks with twin movements using the resonance generated by the pendulums to make them beat in counterphase at a common and inalterable frequency.

Abraham-Louis Breguet was the only other watchmaker known to have successfully applied resonance as a source of precision. It led to what is perhaps his greatest achievement — the two twin-movement, twin-pendulum regulators acquired respectively by King George IV of England and King Louis XVIII of France. Breguet also extended his experiments to a watch in which twin independent balances beat at a common frequency, but this watch was stolen from the L.A. Mayer Memorial Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem on the night of April 15/16 1983, along with other pieces of Sir David Salomon's Breguet collection, notably the "Marie-Antoinette" watch.

Journe had the opportunity of studying the Louis XVIII resonance clock (the Breguet double regulator No. 3177, completed in 1819) when he was restoring the collection of the Ecole des Arts et Métiers in Paris in the early eighties. From then on, he became determined to apply resonance in a watch. His first attempt, a pocket-watch in 1984, was a failure, and it wasn't until 15 years later that he successfully harnessed the mysterious telepathy between oscillating bodies in a practical modern wristwatch.

Antide Janvier's superb twin movement regulator — a magnificent scientific instrument of great precision, built in the 1770s. More than two centuries later Journe successfully applied the same horological principle to a wristwatch and acquired Janvier's masterpiece for around one million dollars.

In his resonance wristwatches, the two 21,600 v/h balances have to beat to within 30 oscillations a day of one another and to be set around 0.4mm apart to start vibrating in counterphase at the same frequency.

The claimed advantage is a greater consistency of rate on the wrist. A shock affecting the rate of one balance will cause its twin to compensate until both settle down to their common frequency. The resonance watch is supposed to keep the same rate on or off your wrist.

Anthony Randall has rated a Journe resonance watch for 30 days, finding an average rate gain of a second a day at a variation of less than 0.3 seconds a day.

A remarkable aspect of this watch is that it was Journe's first wristwatch in 20 years of watchmaking.

III. The remontoir d'égalité, or constant-force remontoir

Journe's other main line of interest is in an arcane horological device known as the constant-force remontoir. It consists of a supplementary energy source — a spring or weights. Armed via the going train by the main power source, it feeds constant force directly to the escapement. The remontoir thus absorbs the fluctuations of power coming through the going train, isolating the escapement from their effects.

The remontoir principle was used in tower clocks where the wind catching the hands would put pressures on the going train that would disturb the rate, if allowed to act directly on the escapement. It was also common in the best observatory regulator clocks, and much of Abraham-Louis Breguet's research was devoted to constant-force escapements.

Journe's tourbillon à remontoir d'égalité, launched in 2000 is the first application of a constant force device in a wristwatch. A blade spring, armed every second by the going train, keeps the escapement under constant tension, even as the power of the unwinding mainspring declines. In the limited space of a wristwatch, the tourbillon is the only form of escapement that permits a remontoir. By stacking up the escapement and fourth wheel on the same axis as the balance, it leaves enough room for the constant-force device.

IV. Brand value

Currently, fewer than 2000 people in the world wear a Journe watch, but that number will probably double two years hence. Although the owner of an F.P. Journe watch will probably have a greater depth of horological appreciation than most participants in a TimeZone brand forum, Journe reckons that there are enough of those to sustain a production of 1500 a year.

His premises, in a busy artisan's quarter on Geneva's left bank, not far from the private-banking area and the Synagogue, consist of assembly and adjustment workshops (around 15 watchmakers), a small mechanical workshops to make tools and prototypes and a design and construction bureau. Production is unlikely to be much more than 800 watches in 2002. Each watch is entirely assembled adjusted, cased up and tested by one of the watchmakers specialized in its caliber. The parts, manufactured and finished to Journe's specifications, are delivered by about 40 different suppliers. Journe has an interest in a dial factory with Cedric Johner and other small watch companies.

The movements are finished in good taste and without extravagance in the classic Geneva style, and are obviously made with every care.

Whether the styling of Journe's watches appeals is a matter of individual taste. But it cannot be denied that it is functional, restrained and original. The dials are a third of the surface of the face yet they show the hours, seconds and minutes very clearly. Only half the dial need emerge from beneath your cuff to tell you the time. In the Octa watches, the chronograph hand or the retrograde dates-hand interfere with the dial, but otherwise the layout is harmonious. The look is that of a precision instrument made without frills.

V. Quality problems

However, in April, Watchbore received a communication from Mr H. Victor Katz, a dealer in watches, reporting the failure of a number of F.P. Journe watches, notably the Octa watch with power-reserve indicator and large date. Although Mr Katz had previously registered satisfaction with a similar watch bought in October 2001 at a discount (USD14,300) from Swiss Fine Timing in Illinois, the reputation of the Journe watch had slumped in his esteem. The Illinois store was no longer dealing in Journe watches having had many returned by clients.

Watchbore lost little time in confronting Journe with this information and learned that in a number of watches the ratchet wheel and/or the dates-wheel had broken due to an undetected metallurgical fault. The problem affected more than 100 watches, a substantial proportion of the output. By mid-2002, the watches had been repaired under guarantee. Journe had earlier ceased to supply Swiss Fine Timing because it sold his watches at a discount, notably to Mr Katz. Now the Illinois store has promised to stop discounting Journe watches and is being allowed to sell them again. Moreover, Mr Katz can congratulate himself on having secured a Journe watch at a discount — even Journe's best friends have to pay the full price.

VI. Rebel among the brands

Journe makes the big brands feel uncomfortable because he ought to be a supplier and not a brand. By setting a standard they cannot match, he competes unfairly against the cartel of prestigious traditional-watch brands. His work makes their claims of innovation and creativity sound hollow. He undermines their myths, upstages their complications and their culture, and his work is of undisputable integrity. (The only descent into gadgetry that Watchbore can reproach him with has been to make visible the action of the remontoir by attaching a vane on top).

Journe lays himself open to prosecution for describing his watches as chronometers without gaining a certificate from COSC, the only organization in the world that says what's a chronometer and what isn't. He says he did apply to have his watches tested but has received no reply. The directors of COSC and of its Geneva laboratories profess never to have heard of F. P. Journe or of the resonance watch. Journe says COSC is not much of a challenge as the standards are too low, it is non-competitive, and the static tests, devised for pocket-watches are meaningless for modern wristwatches, and especially for his resonance watch.

Like all independent watchmakers, Journe is being squeezed by the monopoly supplier. He uses the same Nivarox Anachron balance spring as Omega's coaxial, where production has increased dramatically. Although he is joining up with other small manufacturers to secure essential component supplies and manufacturing services, he remains vulnerable to the whims and jealousies of Mr Nicholas Hayek.

However, this insecurity is only encouraging Journe to design some kind of balance or regulating organ that doesn't need a coiled hairspring.

Another possible danger is that Journe will fall victim to his growing success and abandon horological purity. As Franck Muller knows, having a successful brand is more fun, and more lucrative, than making good watches.

However, Journe is not a flashy kind of person, but that pretty dark-haired girl with the flashing eyes that first attracted Watchbore's attention to his watches is how the mother of his second child. They say that a pram in the hallway spells the death of creativity.

It is Watchbore's hope that Journe will continue challenging the stuffy conventions of Swiss watchmaking with more innovative horology. He believes that Journe still has the potential to surprise, and that future historians of watchmaking could well rank him up there with Abraham-Louis Breguet, Harrison, Janvier and Berthoud.

Watchbore