![]() ![]() ![]() In 2019 he invenit et fecit one of the most astounding timepieces I’ve ever seen, an astronomically-themed super-watch containing 18 mechanical functions and indications. His watches exhibit the kinds of intellectual rigour, gorgeous aesthetics and clear handcraft that are catnip to the horological hardcore, as is their rarity: only around 800 are produced by hand each year. Subscriptions were snapped up, and FP Journe has remained the darling of top-end collectors ever since. He was able to make these thanks to an idea he borrowed from Breguet: clients were invited to join a ‘souscription’ (subscription) scheme, in which down payments enabled Journe to make a run of watches, with the balance then paid on completion. François-Paul Journe worked for brands such as Cartier and Piaget before striking out alone He announced his FP Journe brand to the world with two watches of dizzying ambition: first, a sumptuous tourbillon at a time when almost no one could produce a tourbillon wristwatch next, a watch that drew on the science of resonance – a bewildering oscillatory magic in which two independently vibrating balance wheels mysteriously synchronise – in the cause of chronometric accuracy and sheer horological swag. Journe made his name in the 1980s by recreating the miraculous ‘sympathique’ invention (a pendulum clock that could mechanically set and regulate a connected pocket watch) of the 18th-century master Abraham-Louis Breguet, and spent several years developing complex watches for marquee brands such as Cartier and Piaget.Īsked in 1999 why he was now striking out on his own, he gave an immortal reply: ‘Because I’m fed up with making pearls for swine.’ It’s hardly as if he was retiring about his ability to create masterpieces. It was presumably with an eye on history – and his place within it – that in 1999 the French watchmaker François-Paul Journe appropriated invenit et fecit as a dial slogan for his own, newly launched wristwatches. And for certain geniuses like John Arnold or Thomas Earnshaw, watches that included novel innovations of their own devising would see the inscription extended to invenit et fecit: ‘invented and made by’. In the 17th and 18th centuries, watchmakers might inscribe their surname and the Latin word fecit – ‘made by’ – on the movement of a fine timepiece. What makes the Geneva-based watchmaker tick? Today his extraordinary, original timepieces can fetch more than £1 million. Fed up with ‘making pearls for swine’, FP Journe struck out on his own. ![]()
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