Founded in 1735 by Jehan-Jacques Blancpain, Blancpain is one of the oldest surviving watchmaking brands. During the mid-twentieth century, the original Blancpain fell on difficult times. In 1932, the last member of the Blancpain family died, and for decades afterwards, watches were produced by Rayville.
When the Blancpain watchmaking company was founded in 1735, it was just one of many small workshops making timepieces in the Jura region of Switzerland. After proving capable of moving from small-scale, artisanal production to industrial manufacturing concepts, Blancpain survived economic setbacks that befell the Swiss watch sector. In 1926, John Harwood's invention (the self-winding wristwatch) was incorporated into one of their timepieces.
The following image is Harwood self-winding watch vintage ads, based on Blancpain movements and featuring the automatic winding systems invented by British watchmaker George Harwood.
By 1932, the company was no longer in family hands, and Rayville SA changed its name to Blancpain. Despite this change, production continued in the same spirit as before.
Eventually, the company passed into the hands of SSIH (primarily consisting of both Omega and Tissot companies). They closed it down despite the success of many models, including excellent dive watches that were used by various navies in the 1950s and 1960s
In 1983, Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet, then executives of Omega watches, purchased an old farmhouse in Le Brassus. They began producing highly crafted mechanical watches with simple round cases and automatic movements.
Blancpain established its reputation for making high-quality watches during the 1980s. In the early 1990s, the company reached its ambition of producing 6 limited-edition watches with different complications;
Ultra-slim movement
Moonphase indicator
Split-seconds chronograph
Perpetual calendar
Minute repeater
Tourbillon.
Soon afterwards, a single watch was created that contained all 6 complications.
Blancpain's moonphase indicator is one of the brand's trademarks in many of its gold-cased watches (The Villeret Collection). The company also produces innovative watches, such as the Quattro, which has a tourbillon, flyback chronograph, split-seconds mechanism and perpetual calendar.
In 1992, the Swatch Group (the descendant of SSIH) purchased Blancpain for approximately a thousand times what Biver had paid to buy the name ten years earlier. Biver left shortly after and went on to become head of luxury watchmaking for LVMH.
Today the brand is best known for its dive watches, including the Fifty Fathoms and Bathyscaphe. They are very similar to the originals from the mid-twentieth century but use high-tech materials like ceramic, sapphire, and silicon and are much larger. Production is still executed by a single watchmaker building each final watch instead of working on an assembly line.
The company's claim of never having made a quartz watch can largely be attributed to the fact that it was shut down during the era of quartz's popularity before it became a standard bearer for the resurrection of traditional mechanical watchmaking.
"Blancpain has never made a quartz watch and never will."
The Fifty Fathoms was designed by the French naval officer's Captain Robert Maloubier and Lieutenant-Commander Jacques-Yves Cousteau. The two men specified the watch's rotating bezel, screw-down crown, and luminous materials. Though it was first produced in 1953, it became one of the most influential diver's watches ever.
91.45 meters is the maximum diving depth a diver using standard scuba equipment available in the early 1950s could achieve using the fifty fathoms.
Blancpain is the only watch brand to have its movements entirely made by one person, from start to finish. The style of decoration in Blancpain movements varies greatly among the different watch families. The Villeret and Le Brassus watch bright feature polishing and Geneva stripes, whereas the Fifty Fathoms watches are more understated with dark finishes and grained surfaces.
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