DISCOVERY
VERY FEW POCKET WATCHES BY WINNERL SURVIVE, AND
THOSE THAT DO ARE RATHER SOBER, KEEPING TO THE IDEA OF
A ‘TOOL WATCH’ WITH THE PRIMARY FOCUS OF TIMEKEEPING.
Of course, Winnerl and I gained our watchmaking
experience from different sources in different centuries, and
finally ended up in different places, but the background,
trajectory and tradition of learning and apprenticeship
between us is quite similar. Furthermore, Winnerl’s
concentration was mainly with the art of timekeeping itself
for scientific and nautical purposes and less with the creation
of fashionable timepieces.
His work struck me as the purest form of watchmaking. I
think I recognized my own tastes and preferences for a
similar way of working that made Winnerl’s oeuvre very
attractive to me.
What did you do after leaving Philippe Dufour’s atelier?
I thoroughly enjoyed working with Philippe Dufour and it was
an incredibly enriching experience. However, I really wanted
to work with different types of watches, movements and
complications like tourbillons. For that reason I ended up
setting up my own workshop, Atelier du Joux, in 2004, and for
the last fourteen years now I have been working for other
brands such as Greubel Forsey, Moser, Urban Jürgensen,
MB&F and MCT.
My workshop is small, but we’re able to cover everything
such as movement design, prototyping, finishing, the
assembly of tourbillons, repeaters and every kind of
complication imaginable, as well as complex repairs and
restorations.
Why you have only now started now with Winnerl after
all of those experiences?
It was a process that I did not want to rush in any way…. It
began with researching Winnerl’s history and patents,
cataloguing existing timepieces. As my curiosity increased I
tried designing the first movement, and even some
movements planned for the future, that could also have been
created by Winnerl. I wanted the first movement to be
something he would be proud of were he alive today.
Therefore I decided to make it a completely new movement.
I designed all the drawings and calculations myself
embedding as much of Winnerl’s ideas in the watch as
possible. The parts were all made to my precise specifications,
mostly by Andreas Strehler, who is a good friend of mine.
This first Winnerl wristwatch is truly a ship’s chronometer
120 | INTERNATIONAL WATCH | SPRING 2019
for the wrist, inside and out, and in fact it is the first
wristwatch movement of its kind incorporating a unique
balance wheel design taken directly from Winnerl’s
chronometer No. 80.
Despite being more than 175 years old, this chronometer
number keeps better time than any quartz watch, with just a
cleaning and oiling. The austere, seemingly simple design was
perfectly executed, with exceptional craftsmanship in every
detail. My personal feeling is that if Winnerl – a no-nonsense
kind of guy - were here today, and was suddenly introduced to
the wristwatch form, he would likely start off making
wristwatches with direct inspiration based on his ship’s
chronometers. Such a small, and highly accurate timekeeper
like that would have been unknown in his day, and a kind of
marvel.
If Winnerl was so well known and acknowledged in his
day, why is he not more well known today?
I think there are a number of reasons behind that. Many
collectors today do not realize that watchmakers in previous
centuries often had to make a choice between pure
watchmaking for specialized nautical or scientific
applications, or creating timepieces for the public, dependent
upon their professional or economic needs.
In very rare cases, you might find specialized and public
watchmaking being created by one workshop or individual. A
typical example of pure watchmaking everyone today might
know is perhaps John Harrison; he mainly only made clocks
as tools, such as chronometers for finding the longitude at sea,
along with a few regular pocket watches for himself and an
acquaintance or two.
Breguet represents the exactly opposite extreme: almost all
of his watches were created for his numerous, very rich
private clientele and aristocrats, concerned mainly with
exclusivity or status – despite Breguet’s inventivity and
horological improvements.
Very few pocketwatches by Winnerl survive, and those that
do are rather sober, keeping to the idea of a ‘tool watch’ with
the primary focus of timekeeping. This is because the
majority of his watchmaking centered on marine
chronometers, many of which were made specifically for the
French Navy or for observatory and scientific applications. So,
you can really say Winnerl was what I would call ‘the