This is no smal feat, however: skeletonisation is a technique with many risks and complexities, both mechanically and design-wise. In short, to make a skeletonised watch, you want to strip the movement of as much metal as possible, whilst making sure that it still functions!īy making the watch more lean, slimming down bridges, gears and leads, you are left with only the bare essential components of the timepiece. Breguet Classique Tourbillon Squelette Extra-Thin ref.5395 In this period, many brands invested their time (and hope) into adopting and developing this technique with the aim of the wearer taking an extra moment to appreciate the quality of the craftsmanship in the mechanical movement thanks to an “open” visible dial. The technique came back onto the scene and began to gain traction in the 1960s, when the Swiss watch industry, amidst the Quartz Crisis, was trying every single possible method to prop the market up. This consisted in the separation of certain parts of the movement by a series of bridges – a widespread technique present today.Īlas, the art of horological skeletonisation was not a huge hit unti many years later. Instead, Lèpine made his mark in the watch industry by his various technological innovations, most importantly, the invention of the Lèpine Caliber. This equally talented French watchmaker, however, did not make his name in the horological world by following the skeletonised design. This design choice was deliberately made so that the owner of the watch, along with whoever might admire it, could see the internal mechanisms for both aesthetic preferences and personalisation purposes alike.Įven though the technique was employed on just one portion of the movement, this was the earliest iteration of skeletonisation that would pave the way for the method that we are familiar with today.Īndré-Charles Caron garnered the interest and the following of fellow watchmaker, apprentice and brother-in-law, Jean-Antoine Lèpine. This was the unique design motif of the piece. The first recorded use of the skeletonisation technique dates back to 1760, when the Frecnch watchmaker André-Charles Caron constructed a pocket watch with a balance bridge that was surface finished, engraved with his last name and, most importantly, visible. It’s a horological technique that has been around for longer than most would think, and nowadays is present in timepieces from all over the spectrum from mainstream pieces to hyper-exclusive iterations.Īlthough the practice has been around for a few centuries, it has only just recently become a horological technique to pull off easily for large scale manufacturing. This is best described by the saying “less is more“: the less material there is, the more “watch” you can see. This draws more attention to the intricate key components of the movement, but, oxymoronically makes the watch appear more complex. In horological terms, this is the removal of superfluous material from the movement. Skeleton watches are timepieces that have undergone skeletonisation.
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