Breguet Watches
The history of Breguet
Abraham Louis Breguet was a watchmaker of unparalleled ingenuity and insight, who is universally acknowledged as having had a great influence on the world’s cultural heritage. Breguet had a significant hand in defining the principles and standards of reference for Luxury Watches that are still valid today. A.L. Breguet spent most of his life in Paris, where he dedicated himself to studying the art of watchmaking, taking an active part in its technical evolution with a great number of different inventions. From the very start of his career, A.L. Breguet produced surprising innovations: to him we owe the “perpetual” clock, an automatic winding system for watches linked to the movement of the wrist; he was also the first to use gong springs in repeating watches and to develop a balance spring protection device. He soon became the watchmaker to extremely important people of the time; his timepieces chimed the hours in some of the most influential European courts. For his contribution to world watchmaking he was appointed a member of the Longitude Commission, became the Watchmaker to the Navy, was voted into the Academy of Science and received the Legion d’Honneur from Louis XVIII in person. As proof of the craftsmanship of those who have created it and the attention and care that is spent in its manufacture, each Breguet timepiece has a unique factory number. This tradition dates back to the first years of the label’s existence and allows the life of a Breguet watch to be traced right back through the centuries.
The Breguet Style
To ensure that his style is timeless, A.L. Breguet designs its watches by drawing inspiration from the classical rules of proportion and order. All the Watchmaker’s creations today are unmistakeable owing to the care taken over detail and their classical, timeless aesthetics. The unmistakeable Breguet style is revealed by the famous Guilloche embossed dials. Another particular trait of Breguet’s production is its watch hands and their striking understated elegance, and the caseband fluting, also special to Breguet watches, inspired by the style of the cases of the first watches made by the French watchmaker.
La Marine Collection
The La Marine collection revives Breguet’s traditional values in a modern vein applied to sports watches. These contemporary watches that have been created to satisfy the needs of the modern man are actually inspired by the timepieces made by the Watchmaker’s founder for the French Royal Navy.
Type XX-XXI-XXII
Conceived around 1950 for the French Air and Naval forces, the Type XX now enhances the Breguet collection in a new modern and civilian version, self-winding and with the celebrated fly-back function, used in aviation when setting a course.
Maintenance
A clock has an internal mechanism that is made up of many cogs that are constantly moving and coming into contact. That’s why Breguet suggest that every watch should be checked every 4-5 years, partly to guarantee the reliability of the watch and verify the conditions in which it has been used. In this way one can assess the need for a thorough servicing to clean the mechanism of any lubricant oils, which over the years are naturally bound to lose their effectiveness, ensure that the case is still watertight and that the watch is in top working condition. For battery change operations, Breguet recommends contacting an authorised Servicing Centre that will have the equipment and the tools required to carry out the operation and is certified to operate according to professional standards.
