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Virtual visit

Artistic craft or the art of craftsmanship, the know-how of the artisans work or engine-turning specialists in the Manufacture Breguet remains one of the brand’s key assets.

Watchmaking at Breguet.
Breguet’s archives, kept in Switzerland and in Paris, record the developments that have sustained Breguet watchmaking for more than two centuries. The firm is committed to remaining ahead of its time with a flow of inventions and improvements.

Today Breguet watches are made in the Vallée de Joux, the centre of advanced mechanical horology. The Breguet workshops bring together extraordinary resources to handle the essential aspects of watchmaking.

Equipped with watchmaking tools that A.- L. Breguet could scarcely imagine, his successors in the Breguet workshops combine avant-garde processes with closely guarded traditional techniques. The constant modernization of their equipment reveals the motivation of the craftsmen who build the Breguet watch : pride in their work.

Driven by the same enthusiasm that A.-L. Breguet brought to his art, craftsmen work daily to perfect the timepieces that earn Breguet its position as the architect of fine horology.

Watch production is divided into a dozen very different workshops. In one, massive presses exert tremendous forces to cut tiny metal components. In another, removed as far as pos­sible from all sources of vibration, digitally controlled transfer machines mill complex shapes in metal to tolerances of a few microns. Concentration is palpable in the dust-free atmosphere of the assembly and casing-up workshops.

All of the hundreds of operations that go into the orches­tration of a Breguet watch need deft hands, experienced eyes and an ear for the melody of time.

Each feature expresses the quiet pride of expertise in superior performance. In a magnified world, tiny components are progressively made true, and their surfaces finished for unforgiving inspection, before they are combined into the mechanism of astounding complexity that gives a Breguet watch its life.

Breguet watchmakers regard exactitude as the sacred duty of their art. Behind individual methods lies a common commitment to achieving the highest standard of workman­ship through constant refinement. Applying techniques that pre-date machines, they work quickly and precisely to create instruments in harmony with the most demanding score of all, the silent music of time.

Breguet’s approach to watchmaking preserves the indivi­duality of each watch in a world of standard products.

A.- L. Breguet never made two watches exactly alike, and there is no reason for the firm that he founded to break from that tradition. Besides, collectors of Breguet watches would never allow it.

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