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A braham-Louis Breguet is unique in the history of watchmaking. A prolific innovator who was renowned and idolized during his lifetime, he has never suffered the oblivion that is too often cruelly inflicted on the great figures of history. His works, which have been coveted and collected without interruption since the end of the 18th century have, for many years, created drama and suspense in the auction room.
Two centuries ago, in the early 1820s, publishing what is probably the first commercial catalogue in watchmaking history, Abraham-Louis Breguet and his son Antoine-Louis explained their interactions with existing and potential clients: “we are frequently asked about the dimensions, shapes and diverse functions of our watches and chronometers”. They added, referring to the etchings illustrating the descriptions, “these figures only offer a small part of the combinations that the civil watches can have; but we can multiply them and make them vary at will, by designating the diameter of such number, with the width of such other one, and adopting such functions (…)”. These simple sentences, beyond showing a real sense of listening to their clients, reveal what Breguet watch lovers have understood for more than two centuries: the originality and extreme agility that this watchmaker demonstrated throughout his life, to treat, one by one or simultaneously, all the fields of watchmaking.
The man who designed the most complicated watch ever known, also produced the simplest. The same man who designed Breguet No. 160, known as the “Marie-Antoinette”, the Pendule Sympathique (a watch and a clock that are connected!) or the Tourbillon (a system designed to cancel the effects of the gravity on earth), also played with the exercise of extreme simplification by designing the so-called ‘Souscription’ watch, without doubt the most simple watch ever made by a watchmaker, and today an icon of design.
In a dazzling synthesis of Swiss, English and French watchmaking, during his professional life of some 50 years, Abraham-Louis Breguet managed to shake up and exert an influence on his profession that is still palpable today. Simultaneously a genius engineer, accomplished artist and ambitious entrepreneur, he shined throughout Europe and beyond, establishing his reputation in London, Madrid, Naples, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Istanbul. Building close relationships with numerous royal families, amazingly he succeeded in being a supplier to Napoleon and his many enemies!
Whilst his friends advised him to focus on a few models and concentrate on mass production to make his fortune, Breguet instead preferred not to make two similar pieces. Such was his desire for creativity and intellectual fulfilment that, by this token, he would remain financially insecure his whole life.
And, do we know that he made inroads outside the watchmaking field and supplied metallic thermometers, sometimes as a ring or a watch, sometimes as laboratory instruments? We could also mention his role as a pioneer in the field of aerial telegraphy, by helping first Chappe and then by creating a competing system.
Being captivated by Breguet - his work, his Maison - is to enter a universe with unexpected dimensions.
