Having standards

One of the most revealing moments of my visit to Laurent Ferrier involved a case that had failed inspection. The line of its polish did not meet the manufacture’s standards. We were being shown why it had been rejected, and I kept thinking about how easily that detail could disappear into a photograph of a finished watch. A case catches the light, looks beautiful, and we move on. Here, someone had to decide whether that light was travelling along the right line.

The day before Geneva Watch Days opened, I joined some colleagues at the Laurent Ferrier manufacture in Plan-les-Ouates. Our guide was Jessica Gasser, Head of Communication & PR, whom I had met earlier in the year at Watches & Wonders. During that meeting, we discussed the recently released Sport Traveller, a watch I subsequently counted among my highlights of the fair. In my April article, I wrote about the patience and discipline evident in the brand’s finishing. This visit gave those words a much more concrete meaning.

We saw several watches taking shape, including the new Classic Moon Dusk. We watched jewels being set, dial dimensions being checked and adjusted, and movement components receiving attention on a scale that made the watch on my own wrist seem positively large. I took plenty of photographs. My notes were less impressive. But the image that has stayed with me is of a piece of gentian wood being used to polish metal.

Hand finishing anglage with gentian would and diamond aste at Laurent Ferrier — Gentian wood and diamond paste used in *anglage* at Laurent Ferrier @calibre321

A plant at the workbench

There is something wonderfully specific about that combination: gentian pith and diamond paste. The soft interior of a plant becomes a tool for bringing a metal edge to its final lustre. It is the sort of detail that makes you lean closer.

Gentian enters the process near the end of a longer sequence. In traditional hand-bevelling, or anglage, the edge of a component is shaped and progressively refined before the final polish. The pith provides a gentle support for the fine polishing paste. The abrasive does the cutting; the person holding the stem controls where and how it works. Even the harder exterior of the stem must be kept away from the prepared edge.

Watching a small movement of the hand, it would be easy to underestimate what is happening. The person at the bench is working on a surface whose shape has already taken considerable effort to establish. The final stage has to improve that surface while preserving it.

A polished bevel also has to remain consistent as it follows the component. At an interior corner, two bevels must meet cleanly. Under magnification, the meeting point leaves little room for approximation. This is one reason collectors spend so much time looking at the edges of bridges: those narrow surfaces tell us something about the work that went into them.

The manufature at Laurent Ferrier — The manufacture of Laurent Ferrier @calibre321

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Maison Alcée x MB&F Nostromo Hands-On: 222 Parts, Three Feet, and Ten Hours at the Bench

Where the hours go

Laurent Ferrier provides a useful example in its description of the Sport Auto 79. The finishing stages on that watch’s rotor bridge alone take two to three hours. Those stages include bevelling, polishing with gentian wood and diamond paste, and different surface treatments on the component’s faces. That is one bridge in the automatic LF270.01, rather than a total for the hand-wound Classic Moon movement we also encountered. For reference, the Calibre LF126.02 contains 266 components and 25 jewels. You do the math.

The LF126.02 — Calibre LF126.02 contains 266 components and 25 jewels @calibre321

Two to three hours is a meaningful stretch of anyone’s working day. Applied to one small part, it changes the scale of the conversation. It also helps explain why “hand-finished” can be such an inadequate description. The phrase occupies a fraction of a specification sheet. At the bench, it represents a sequence of tasks, each dependent on the quality of the one before it.

The surfaces demand different kinds of attention. Black polishing, for example, uses diamond paste on a zinc plate to produce an exceptionally flat, reflective face. Viewed at the right angle, that face appears black. The colour comes from the reflection, rather than a black coating. But even in the sterile climate-controlled manufacture, this process can be complicated by the weather–the atmospheric pressure–outside.

These techniques give a movement much of its visual depth. Broad surfaces establish a texture; polished edges pick out the architecture. As the light moves, one part recedes and another becomes distinct. I spend a fair amount of time photographing watches, and I enjoy that effect. Seeing the work behind it made me more conscious of how much I am borrowing from someone else’s hands when I point a lens at a movement.

A close up of the Sport Traveller LF275.01 — The Sport Traveller LF275.01 manufacture calibre @calibre321

The line on the case

The rejected cases brought the same discussion outside the movement. We tend to give case finishing a quick adjective or two before turning a watch over. Yet the case is the part we handle most, and its curves establish our first impression of the whole object.

Polishing removes material. It therefore calls for judgement about shape as well as shine. A surface can be reflective without following the intended contour, and a polished line can lose the definition that makes the design work. What we saw during the tour was a standard being enforced at that level.

I cannot attach a reliable number of finishing hours to those cases. The rejection itself was more instructive than an estimate would have been. Time had already been invested, but the result still had to pass inspection. The decision belonged to someone with the experience to recognise the problem and the authority to say that the part was not ready.

There is a cost to that decision. There is also a great deal of trust in it. Most owners will never meet the person who makes the call, yet they will spend years wearing the result.

Hand inspection — Careful inspection of each component @calibre321

Rejecting a case that does not meet standards — Careful inspection of each component @calibre321

Making everything fit

Elsewhere, we watched dial dimensions being calibrated and jewels being set. These operations were a useful reminder of how much exacting work sits behind a dial that appears perfectly settled into its case. Its colour and printing may hold our attention, but it also has to fit the assembly around it.

Jewel setting carries its own demands. In a movement, bearing jewels provide hard, low-friction surfaces for the pivots of moving parts. With a friction setting, a jewel is pressed into a prepared opening, and its depth has to be controlled. Position affects the clearance available to the part it supports. A jewel can look neatly seated and still require adjustment for the mechanism to work correctly.

My photographs show watches supported between fingertips, protective finger cots, and faces drawn close to the work through magnification. There are lamps, holders and tools surrounding each small task. The finished watch conceals most of that activity. A manufacture visit lets you linger over it.

Anglage — A process measured in hundreds of hours @calibre321

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The Classic Moon Dusk

The new Classic Moon Dusk gave us a particularly handsome example of where all this work leads. Its 40mm case is made from 18K 2N yellow gold, paired with an opaline dial graduating from light taupe to chocolate. Gold-sheen obsidian features in the moon-phase display. An annual calendar shares the dial, with day and month windows near twelve and a central date hand. The edition comprises 20 pieces.

Inside is the manually wound LF126.02, with 266 components and an 80-hour power reserve–Geneva stripes on the rhodium-treated bridges, perlage on the plate, and hand-polished chamfers and screw heads. Its long-blade ratchet pawl receives a rounded, polished bassiné finish.

Those details are easier to appreciate after moving between the benches. A polished edge has a process attached to it. A jewel has to be positioned. A case has to satisfy the person inspecting it. The watch brings all those separate judgements together in something small enough to disappear beneath a cuff.

The Laurent Ferrier Classic Moon Dusk nears completion @calibre321

My turn

At the end of the tour, we were invited to try perlage and set a jewel in a stylized barrel wheel. This was a generous opportunity to test the confidence that can develop while watching someone very good at their job.

Perlage is the overlapping pattern of small circles often found on movement plates. A rotating abrasive tip makes each impression; consistent placement and overlap create the pattern. It sounds manageable when written in a sentence.

Let’s just say that my finished creation does not merit a photograph.

The Laurent Ferrier Classic Moon Silver on wrist — Laurent Ferrier Classic Moon Silver: GPHG 2024 Calendar and Astrology Watch Prize @calibre321

I will leave it at that, except to say that the exercise gave me a more useful appreciation of the work than another beautifully finished watch alone could have done. Looking at a regular pattern, I tend to absorb it as a whole. Trying to produce one made me think about every individual mark, and how each would sit beside the last.

As we stood on the front steps of the manufacture after our tour awaiting our car, news of the final nominees for the GPHG arrived. The Sport Traveller and the Classic Origin Beige both got the nod. I was not surprised.

Back at Watches & Wonders, the Sport Traveller had impressed me with how complete it felt on the wrist. At Plan-les-Ouates, I got to see some of the work that produces that feeling. I left with photographs of people concentrating on parts most of us would struggle to hold, and a small souvenir of my own limited abilities. The next time I turn over a Laurent Ferrier, I suspect I will spend rather longer looking at the edges.