STORY KIM LEE A powerful old name returned to life with full honour to the virtues of its founder and namesake, Jaquet Droz continues its tradition of marrying technology with beauty to create timepieces that are sheer art. A most peculiar ostrich egg-like contraption stood in the corner of the room. It wore a cap of gold fingers that fitted over a transparent base filled with cogs and wheels. It begged the question: What is that?
Manuel Emch, 31, Managing Director of Jaquet Droz SA, acquired by the Swatch Group stable in April 2000, answers by setting the Singing Bird automaton in motion. Bells tinkle as the golden cap rises to show a palm tree spreading its protective fronds over a little pastoral landscape. In it, three birds come to life with song as beaks open and close and wings twitch and flap. One is a crane, whose head bobs as it trills. A goatherd, with his goat and two ducks, joins their melody with his flute. The goat even tosses its head to the music.
Watching this, a long forgotten feeling wells up: it is the amazement you may remember last having felt as a child seeing something fantastic for the first time.
The Singing Bird is a memorable introduction to the genius of Jaquet Droz, master Swiss watchmaker and innovative craftsman from La Chaux-de-Fonds. His name is Pierre Jaquet Droz, born 1721 and hailed among the world's five finest watchmakers.
Emch was in Singapore to re-introduce the name to Asia. In using the automaton for attention, he took his cue from the brand's founder. Pierre Jaquet Droz had a reputation for these magical creations. He was also an entrepreneur who saw in them a way of exciting an audience for his watches and other luxury creations - these automatons were his public relations and marketing tools. They worked well enough to win the custom of the King of Spain, the Emperor of China and all manner of royalty and moneyed nobility that lay between and beyond these two countries.
Born into a farming community, Pierre Jaquet Droz first did religious studies before switching to mathematics, physics and biology in Basel. He had the fortune of studying under one of the finest mathematicians of the 18th century. This education gave spark to the genius with which Droz created his clocks and automatons. His legendary work pioneered algorithmic calculations.
Droz opened his first workshop in La Chaux-de-Fonds. He soon distinguished himself by marrying technology with beauty, something novel then. He was the first to use precious stones and enamel decorations on his watches. A second workshop followed in London in 1774, and a third in Geneva in 1784.
The London workshop made it easier to reach Asia. Droz personally journeyed to England, France, Spain and China to show his creations. Seventy per cent of his sales were in Asia, mostly to the art-loving Chinese Emperor Chen Lung, then ruler of the largest empire in the world.
Jaquet Droz was driven not just by Pierre Jaquet Droz but also by his son, Henri Louis, an artist, musician and brilliant mechanical engineer; and their associate, Fredrik Leschot.
After Droz's death in 1790, and that of his son a year later, Leschot kept the company going. But when the Napoleonic wars disrupted trade and scattered European nobility, the name slipped into obscurity. Yet the legacy of their innovations survived - enough to excite the Breguet watch company to acquire the brand in the 1980s.
Breguet the watchmaker and Droz were contemporaries. Both were innovators. Together with AL Perrelet, they developed perpetual watches, using the movement of the watch wearer to keep the watch wound. Droz was also quick to adapt to developments, such as the revolutionary caliber by French horologist Jean-Antoine Lepine that allowed the creation of thinner, more elegant watches.
The combination of technological innovations and beauty led to breathtaking timepieces that were sheer art. One of these is the Love Letter, made in 1785 - an oval, centre-seconds pocket watch featuring 18K gold, enamelwork, paillon decorations, and set with split pearls and diamonds.
Another is a ruby-set singing bird pocket watch. Its Louis XVI case has alternate ruby- and split pearl-set bezels, an enamel back with a pastoral scene and an enamelled silver singing bird perched on a gold branch above the dial. It is one of the earliest singing bird watches known. Yet another pocket watch, circa 1790, is special not just for the blue enamel back spangled in gold and silver, but for an ultra-flat movement.
Jaquet Droz is remembered most vividly, however, for its extraordinary automatons, particularly three automated dolls of the 1770s, built by Droz and his son. So life-like were they that the word 'android' was created to describe them. They are the Writer, the Draughtsman and the Musician.
The most complex android, the Writer, is considered the world's oldest computer with an input device and the equivalent of a read-only memory. A quill pen serves as output, with mechanisms that precisely control the pen for an elegant handwriting. The trio live on in the Art And History Museum in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
At Jaquet Droz today, says Emch, "We offer automatons which are replicas. We had a request from the Benjamin Franklin Museum, (for) a Benjamin Franklin writing the first words of the US Constitution. It is for people who want something unique."
One can also order something unique from the contemporary collection of Jaquet Droz watches, characterised by enamelled backs, porcelain dials and winding buttons crowned by a blue sapphire.
"Techniques used in the enameled dial are exactly the same as that used 200 years ago," says Emch. "To do something like this, we might have probably the only one in Switzerland who can do it. We have hired some young people and we're training them in order not to lose the techniques."
"Most of our collections are limited, either to 88 or eight pieces, or to one-of-a-kind. We do a lot of customisation. We do it mainly with precious stones - such as on this watch (A Grande Seconde Cerclée Minérale). Anybody can ask us for any sort of stone and we can do it within two months. The piece will be unique worldwide."
"There was one interesting piece we did for a French collector who was an archaeologist dealing with dinosaurs. He asked us if we could make him something with petrified dinosaur bone." They did.
As a newly revived Swiss watch brand, Jaquet Droz has already grown from two watchmakers to 25. "We're growing with the needs of the company," says Emch. "Our aim is not volume. Our aim is to make a global watch brand."
With consumers returning to real values and things that endure, Jaquet Droz looks like a brand whose time has come again.
S
