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Jaeger-LeCoultre
has just announced the opening of its own Heritage Gallery in Le
Sentier – a new interactive museum experience that celebrates the
venerable Swiss maison's 184-year legacy as the "watchmaker’s watchmaker.”
While there’s certainly no shortage of interesting, historically
significant watchmakers inside Swiss borders, there aren’t many that
actually expend significant resources to preserve their history for
future generations to appreciate. Sure, it’s a form of marketing, but
there’s still a pretty considerable difference of intent between simply
marketing one’s history, and preserving it. The former might help sell
watches now, but the latter is a critical means of self-preservation –
not just for the brand, but the industry as a whole, which ultimately
lives and dies on historical provenance, not practicality. The Omega
Museum in Bienne, the IWC Museum in Schaffhausen, and the Patek Philippe
Museum in Geneva are each noteworthy examples of brands that take this
preservation seriously, and thus excellent stops for any seasoned watch
fan. It may come as a surprise that despite Jaeger-LeCoultre’s vast
contributions to watchmaking, the brand has had no public-facing museum
until now.
The museum itself is situated within Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Vallée de Joux
manufacture in Le Sentier – a picturesque village with a population that
barely eclipses 3,000 people, nestled on Switzerland’s western border
with France. Our first trip to JLC’s headquarters was an impressionable
one indeed, with Ariel calling it “one of the most impressive watch manufactories”
he'd ever visited. Lofty words, but there aren’t many vertically
integrated brands in watchmaking who make virtually every component of
their watches, soup to nuts. And not only has JLC been at the forefront
of the "in-house renaissance," they’ve quietly been a movement and
knowledge resource for many other brands in the industry for the better
part of the last century.
The guided tour of the Jaeger-LeCoultre Heritage Gallery offers
significant proof of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s unique role in horological
history, as it includes stops at the brand’s archives; a veritable
library of carefully preserved registers, documents, and antique books
never before seen by the public. There are also physical vintage
movements here, and examples of fully built competitor watches utilizing
Jaeger-LeCoultre movements, including a Patek Philippe pocket watch,
working proof that JLC’s role as a “watchmaker to the watchmakers” has
been in place since even its earliest days.
As the tour delves deeper into the Jaeger-LeCoultre Heritage Gallery,
before being introduced to some 340 of JLC’s 1,200 calibers on display,
visitors are escorted through projections of Jaeger-LeCoultre’s many
achievements and innovations throughout the years, including the
groundbreaking millionometre (an instrument for measuring a micron)
invented by in 1844 by Antoine LeCoultre, the thermal/atmosphere-powered
Atmos clock, as well as Art Deco icons like the Reverso and more recent
mid-century modern successes like the Geophysic.
The tour concludes with a stop at perhaps the most literal example of
preservation that could possibly be illustrated for this, or any other
watch brand: Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Restoration Workshop. Here, watchmakers
work to fully restore examples dating from the late 1920s to the late
1980s – and even original LeCoultre watches dating to the late 19th
century, back for another pass over these workbenches. However,
Jaeger-LeCoultre's commitment to restoration is somewhat unique, in that
the brand will manufacture, to original spec, any currently unavailable
movement or case component required to fully restore a vintage example
to working order.
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