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The F. P. Journe Historical Anniversary Tourbillon T30

A wristwatch version of the first watch ever made by F. P. Journe.

Jack Forster9 Min ReadFeb 16 2024

A genuinely interesting story has the benefit of being more, not less, interesting for being retold (Homer’s Odyssey is an excellent if somewhat snooty case in point). François-Paul Journe’s origin story starts with his birth in 1957 and with the evidence that accumulated, by the time he was 14 or so, that he was not destined for a career of excellence in academia. It was at that age that his mother sent him to Paris to live with his uncle, Michel Journe, a clockmaker, who inspired him to go to watchmaking school – first in Marseilles, and then in Paris; in 2005 Journe would recall, in an interview with Timezone.com:

“When I was admitted to the Ecole d’horlogerie in Marseille, I knew nothing about watchmaking at all. After a few months, everything seemed simple – it was pure happiness, and I realized that watchmaking was for me. After I finished school, I went to work for my uncle Michel Journe, who was restoring antique watches. I worked for a few years restoring collector’s pieces from the 16th to 18th century. Evidently, these watches were haute horlogerie and for the rest of my life I concentrated my work in this area. In 1978, at the age of twenty, I started to work on my first pocket watch, a Tourbillon.”

Zoom InThe movement of F. P. Journe’s first pocket tourbillon, with detent escapement

Making a watch by hand under any circumstances is a major undertaking; making a tourbillon is even more difficult although the challenge seems to be irresistible to a certain small group of ambitious beginners (including Roger Smith, whose pocket watch No. 2 is a tourbillon with perpetual calendar). Journe’s pocket watch very much showed the influence of the high end watchmakers of past centuries to which he had been exposed – in particular, Breguet. Rexhep Rexhepi, who worked with Journe before he established his own workshop, recalled to A Collected Man in 2020 that, ” … He [Journe] developed a lot of respect for Breguet and Daniels because they pushed horology forwards. They built and invented a lot of the things which have a lasting influence today. As a creator himself, it is natural for Journe to respect those other watchmakers who have created. There is a lot of inspiration and influence from both watchmakers in his work.”

The pocket watch is one of the best examples of a classically laid out tourbillon movement you could ever hope to see – and again, bear in mind that this was the work of a young watchmaker in his early 20s. The movement has a symmetrical layout that recalls the layout of some of Breguet’s tourbillon pocket watches (as well as of the Souscription pocket watches, albeit the symmetry in those watches is of the first wheel of the movement with the balance).

Zoom InBreguet, four minute garde-temps tourbillon, 1809

Just as significantly, the watch shows Journe’s love for the contrast between blued screws, polished steelwork, and gilt colored plates – a style of movement design that was the standard in both Continental and English watchmaking for many years, until the adoption by the Swiss of nickel, and then rhodium-plated brass movements. Daniels was definite in his view that this was the most attractive and refined style of movement design (he was definite as far as I can tell in all of his views) writing in Watchmaking that, “The contrast of blued screws, polished steel, and gilded plates is most pleasing and refined and superior to any other finish.” He also wrote that ” … it is usually the case that when a watchmaker cannot make a technical advance, he will divert attention by decorating his work,” – you get the impression that he thought “jewel-like finish” was a sort of manifestation of intellectual inertia in particular and decadence in innovation in general, and Journe, after beginning with rhodium plated brass movements, returned to the gold-steel-blued-steel aesthetic, but with 18k gold rather than gilt brass plates and bridges.

The T30 Tourbillon

The pocket watch was finished in 1983 and Journe went on to have a career characterized in many respects by the same fundamental values that were behind his first pocket watch. One thing you could never accuse Journe of is being unable to make technical advances – this list is long and includes the first wristwatch with a constant force remontoire (and tourbillon, of course) as well as the first resonance wristwatches, and the 1/100th second Centigraphe. On the 30th anniversary of the completion of the pocket watch, in 2013, Journe released a limited edition wristwatch version of his original tourbillon pocket watch – the Thirty Years Anniversary Tourbillon, with caliber 1412.

Zoom In

At 40mm x 10mm this is more or less a pretty classically proportioned watch, and the dial has the same restrained refinement as the original – unlike most modern dials, which are pad-printed and also usually further embellished with applied indexes and word-marks or logos, the Anniversary Tourbillon’s dial is engraved, with the engravings filled with black lacquer.

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The only decorative accents, if you can call them that, are the blued steel surfaces of the very fine seconds hand, Breguet (or pomme) style hour and minute hands, and the two blued screws fixing the dial in place. This is a somewhat anachronistic but I think beautiful touch. Most modern watch dials are held in place by feet – basically wire pillars – soldered to the back of the dial and held in place by clamps on the movement. Screws fixing the dial in place are features of Breguet’s work, and they were, as is the case here, both practical necessities, and intrinsic parts of the overall dial composition.

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The choice of materials for the case is somewhat unusual, consisting of sterling silver for the case and hinged caseback (the latter is engraved with engine turning in a very traditional spiraling pattern).

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Silver is seldom used in if ever in modern wristwatches, for reasons familiar to anyone who has taken out the long unseen “good” silver flatware for a dinner party (does anyone even do that anymore?) – it tarnishes readily, although Tudor, of all brands, produced a sterling silver version of the Black Bay in 2021  which used a special alloy of the metal formulated to resist tarnishing, which apparently worked pretty well. In this instance, sterling silver and rose gold were used by F. P. Journe because those were the materials used in the original pocket watch.

Caliber 1412

The movement is essentially a wristwatch-sized version of the original dual barrel, tourbillon pocket watch movement from 1983.

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At first glance, the caliber 1412 looks like a straightforward copy-paste of the pocket watch movement, including contrast between blued and polished steel, and the gilt brass plates; caliber 1412 is indeed done in gilded brass. It’s hard to tell for sure but I think the 3N rose gold gilding on caliber 1412 is a bit more red than the gold gilding in the original pocket watch – I’d have to see them side by side, but in any case the overall effect is the same.

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One significant technical difference is of course that the wristwatch is wound and set from the crown – as far as I can tell, the original pocket watch was key-wound and possible key-set; there are square winding arbors on the mainspring barrels of the original, in any case. The two angular click springs from the original are absent from the Anniversary wristwatch – I presume that there is some sort of click system not visible through the display back (there sort of has to be or there would be nothing preventing the barrels from rapidly unwinding). The square winding arbors in the original pocket watch have therefore been replaced by two beautifully polished steel caps, each held in place by three blued screws.

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One big difference between the two watches is in the escapement. The original used a chronometer detent escapement which is quite difficult to implement in a wristwatch – not impossible, but the escapement has a tendency to gallop, or unlock accidentally if given a shock, since the only thing holding the escape wheel in place is the relatively slight pressure of the detent jewel on an escape lever tooth. You can get around this – just ask Raúl Pagès – but the challenge is considerable to put it mildly and detent escapements in watches have never been widely adopted for this reason (albeit creating a detent escapement wristwatch is a tour de force of craft and persistence). For this reason, the Anniversary chronometer has a lateral lever escapement and standard club-tooth escape wheel. Both versions use similar tourbillon cages; the original has a screwed balance with regulator index, while the wristwatch has a smooth freesprung balance with inertial timing weights.

One very noticeable difference between the two is that the finish on the Anniversary pocket watch is much finer than in the original. This is not to say that the finish is in any way poor in the original and in fact Journe at that time was obviously concerned to produce a harmonious and dignified appearance as well – I mean look at those honkin’ huge blued steel screws, you don’t go to the trouble of making that many, that big, if you’re indifferent to aesthetics and over the years Journe has shown himself to be profoundly interested in design and aesthetics. However, to say that his movement finishing is not better after thirty years would be tantamount to saying that in all that time his eye and expectations had not improved, which I think is demonstrably not the case.

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One of the most entertaining hypothetical games you can play as a watch enthusiast is to ask yourself, “if I could have just one Journe watch, which one would I want?” My personal list is quite long and on any given day a resonance chronometer is at or near the top of the list, but on any given day the Anniversary tourbillon is either in the top slot or close. It’s a very pure watch – a tourbillon wristwatch, neat, no chaser and it is like the original thankfully devoid of any unecessary or superfluous technical or aesthetic bells and whistles. It is in short a tourbillon that reminds you why tourbillons were considered one of the pinnacles of tradition watchmaking for a couple of centuries after Breguet’s patents, why they were so rare for so many years, and why, despite the presence of industrialized tourbillons, a well-made tourbillon wristwatch can, in the right hands, still be one of the most intellectually interesting and viscerally exciting watches on the planet. Ten out of ten, would wear.