Blast From The Past: The F. P. Journe Chronomètre Holland & Holland

It is perhaps difficult to realize today just how long a road it was to reach the point where watches and clocks could be made repeatably and reliably – and how much that achievement has to do with the ability of horologists to make high quality steel. Mainsprings, for instance, might seem like the least interesting part of a watch – the cheapest child’s windup toy has a mainspring, after all – but for much of the history of watchmaking, making mainsprings required years of training and was a highly specialized craft, left to highly skilled specialists. Watchmakers were not the only ones who needed to understand how to make high quality steel – gunsmiths, as well as locksmiths, also needed high quality spring steels for their professions and so there has been, for many centuries, considerable overlap between the art of the gunsmith, the locksmith, and the watchmaker. You can see this relationship in some cases, in technical terms – the action of a firearm has been called a “lock” for centuries, and of course, a movement is sometimes referred to as a “caliber.”

The collaboration between F. P. Journe and bespoke British gunmaker, Holland & Holland, might seem at first somewhat unlikely but in fact, the two crafts are so to speak, descended from the same ancestors.

In 2017, Journe collaborated with Holland & Holland for the limited edition Chronomètre Holland & Holland, which have dials made from two vintage Damascus steel H&H shotgun barrels.

Best Of The Best

Holland & Holland is one of a handful of British makers of what are sometimes called “best” or “London Best” quality guns, which have specific technical features but which were traditionally made to the highest possible standards of durability, quality, precision, and physical beauty (sound familiar?) The company was founded by Harris Holland, who made his fortune as a tobacco wholesaler, in 1835 and from what I’ve read he seems to be one of those Victorian merchant princes whose success as an entrepreneur gave them entry to wealth ordinarily reserved for the blue bloods, as well as the lifestyle of those to the manor born. This included hunting and sports shooting – I have not read anywhere that Harris Holland ever shot anything more animate than clay pigeons, but given the popularity of driven bird shoots in those days it seems likely he might have. Thomas de Grey, 6th Lord Walshingham, is recorded to have bagged 1,070 grouse in a single day in 1888, which no matter how you feel about hunting, seems excessive, but it certainly speaks to the depth of the English hunting tradition in particular, and the existence of hunting as a perquisite of the nobility in general.

Harris Holland was also something of a micro-manager, which I suppose self-made men often are – apparently he refused to let anyone else in the company sign a check until he died in 1896. By then the reputation of the company was well established and today it continues to make “best” guns the old-fashioned way.

In another interesting parallel with watchmaking, production of basic components is now done with CNC and spark erosion machines, but there is still an enormous amount of hand finishing and adjustment of components. Holland & Holland is now owned by Beretta Holdings, but prior to that they were owned by Chanel (who acquired H&H in 1989) and of course, Chanel also has a stake in F. P. Journe. Chanel announced its acquisition of a minority position in F. P. Journe in September of 2018, and the Chronomètre Holland & Holland was announced in 2017, but still, I’ve always wondered whether or not not Chanel might have brokered the collaboration, at least to some degree.

As with fine watchmaking, a handmade H&H side-by-side has a luxury premium price, but there is also so much hand-work involved that you can kind of understand, if you think about it, why getting into a classic bespoke H&H double barreled shotgun will require you to part with in excess of a hundred thousand of your favorite dollars, and that’s before you get into custom engraving (for which H&H is justly famous).

The Journe Caliber 1304

The Chronomètre Holland & Holland is a variation on the Chronomètre Souverain, which was first introduced in 2005, which is also the year that it won the Men’s Watch prize at the GPHG. The Chronomètre Souverain is one of Journe’s simplest watches although it is by no means simplistic – the movement, caliber 1304, with its twin mainspring barrels, gold plates and bridges, and 56 hour power reserve, is said by Journe to have been inspired by 19th century marine chronometers.

The original Chronomètre Souverain has a small seconds subdial and a power reserve complication, but these are omitted in the Chronomètre Holland & Holland. This may be due to the thickness of the Damascus steel dial but it might also have been simply an aesthetic decision, inasmuch as leaving them out gives you an uncluttered look at the patterns in the steel dial itself.

The movement is I think, one of Journe’s most beautiful – the fact that it is hand-wound leaves the view of the plate and bridges unobscured and there is a very pleasing, visually harmonious logic to the movement.

Damascus Steel Dials

Damascus steel is a term commonly – I think almost universally, although I’m not an arms and armor historian, Lord knows – used for pattern welded gun barrels. For much of the history of firearms manufacturing, going back to the 15th century, gun barrels were made by shaping steel rods or sheets around a form called a mandrel, whose outside diameter would determine the bore of the firearm. The first gun barrels were made by blacksmiths, who made use of iron horseshoe nails – I don’t know why, maybe they just had a lot of horsehoe nails lying around. Wrapping iron rods around a mandrel, and welding them together by repeated forging and hammering, produces regular patterns in the steel, and these can be accented by etching the surface of the steel in some corrosive substance – I’ve read that smiths used to bury their barrels in horse manure, which I guess they also had a lot of lying around.

Despite the ubiquitous use of “Damascus steel” for pattern-welded steel, Damascus steel is, if you want to be picky, not the same thing. Real Damascus steel is so-called because it was first encountered in swords made, supposedly, in the city of Damascus, but the steel itself – properly known as “wootz” steel, a term whose etymology is also obscure – came from mines and forges further east; South India, apparently, around 2000 years ago. True wootz or Damascus steel often has a very beautiful, fine-grained wavelike pattern visible on the surface of the finished article and pattern-welding can produce a similar, but not identical pattern; hence the name “Damascus steel” for pattern-welded barrels (and other pattern-welded articles).

Making the dials was a laborious process and Journe has said that it required a fairly lengthy testing period, as it was not entirely clear that dials could be made from hundred year old shotgun barrels.

The barrels had original been constructed for top-break double barreled shotguns and the first step was separating the two tubes. Each individual tube was then cut down to a manageable length, and then cut open lengthwise and flattened, leaving metal sheets from which dials could be made. Once the sheets had been flattened to the correct thickness, they were cut into dial blanks by Journe’s dial maker, Les Cadraniers de Genève, and then “browned” at Holland & Holland, before being transfer printed with a chapter ring and F. P. Journe’s wordmark.

“Browning” like bluing, is a surface treatment technique which results in the formation of a protective layer of iron oxide, which helps discourage corrosion – it’s a traditional finishing technique in gunsmithing and it produces a rich, warm surface which also emphasizes the rippling patterns of pattern-welded steel.

As beautiful as pattern-welded barrels are, they are (like mechanical horology, I suppose) an anachronism. They were made when propellants used in ammunition generated lower pressures than modern loads and so, a vintage pattern-welded barrel can be risky to use with modern ammunition as the greater chamber pressure might cause the barrel to burst. It’s possible I suppose to have the barrel proofed (the Worshipful Company Of Gunmakers, which was established in 1637, just a few years after the Worshipful Company Of Clockmakers was established in 1631, still maintains a Proof House in London) but as far as I can tell such testing is destructive – you know a barrel is going to fail under overpressure because it fails under overpressure. We are lucky in horology that you can test a watch or clock without anything exploding in your hands – usually (I wouldn’t want to have my face near a clock mainspring if it failed catastrophically).

When I first heard of this project I was a little taken aback that H&H would consent to the use of two very old shotgun barrels from their archives – the barrels, which were made in 1868 and 1882, are after all irreplaceable artifacts from the period in which the company was establishing its reputation as one of the top bespoke gunsmiths in the world. However, I think the collaboration makes a great deal of sense, historically and aesthetically.

As we’ve seen, the relationship between fine gunsmithing and fine watchmaking is a very close one and there are many parallels in both history, and in basic craftsmanship – steel after all, is steel (the cases of the Chronomètre Holland and Holland watches are steel, naturally). The combination of traditional hand-making and finishing techniques, which have to be preserved against the erosion of time and more efficient technologies, are common to both and also common to both, at the highest level, is the goal of creating objects which are both beautiful and practical. The Chronomètre Holland & Holland is a unique and uniquely interesting collaboration between two companies that represent centuries old traditions, and the continuity of a certain kind of pursuit of excellence.

See it here