Considering watchmakers spend their entire days deep in bridges, wheels and escapements, it’s only natural that they come to develop an admiration for certain calibres. Many may pass through their hands, but only a handful command their respect, whether it’s an ébauche they worked on at school or a vintage piece they had the opportunity to restore. After all, in the case of watchmakers who design and assemble their own creations, the inspiration has to come from somewhere.

Last year, we asked five of them to pick their favourite calibres, in what turned out to be one of our most popular articles to date. With no shortage of accomplished and interesting watchmakers to draw on, we thought we’d revisit the topic. We gathered thoughts from none other than Philippe Dufour, Vianney Halter, Dominique Renaud, Gaël Petermann and Richard Habring. Time to grab a loupe and pop open the caseback. 

Often referred to as the “Godfather” of independent watchmaking, Philippe Dufour has been making watches independently for nearly three decades now, consistently creating understated and elegant pieces, which pay homage to a long-lost tradition of watchmaking. From the Simplicity to the Duality, the small handful of watches he has created have a classic, timeless quality, combined with what can only be described as the finest movement finishing found in any contemporary watch.

Considering Dufour’s admiration for the artistic expressions of the Vallée de Joux from 1850 to 1920, deemed by many to be the golden age of traditional Swiss watchmaking, his choice should come as no surprise. It’s both a movement he admires, as well as a source of inspiration for his own work.

“I always say I never invented anything. If you look at old pocket watch movements with Jaeger-LeCoultre ébauches inside and study the click spring, you will see that it is the same principal adopted in my Simplicity.”

“I took inspiration for my very first movement, a pocket sized Grand Sonnerie Minute Repeater, from a Grande Sonnerie that was made here in the Valleé de Joux. I found the shape of the mechanism very attractive. I’ve always taken inspiration from the watchmakers that came before me and especially from those that worked here in the Valleé.”

“This pocket watch movement was made around the 1900s and so it didn’t have a calibre number or anything like that, but it was made by the Reymond brothers, John and Charles. I drew great inspiration from this movement and the way it was designed when I developed my own Grande Sonnerie Minute Repeater pocket watch movement. The Reymond’s company would later become part of Valjoux.”

From a very young age, Vianney Halter was fascinated by mechanics, science fiction and space exploration. As a natural extension of his eclectic and varied interests, he enrolled himself at the Ecole Horlogère de Paris, at the age of fourteen. Developing movements for Audemars Piguet, Cartier and Breguet early on in his career, he would eventually set out on his own, creating timepieces that undoubtedly bear his mark.

For his favourite, Halter picked the smallest movement ever made, the Jaeger-LeCoultre 101. Despite its minute proportions, the watchmaker’s respect for the caliber is anything but restrained. Notoriously worn by the Queen of England, the 101 has managed to hold its title since it was first introduced in 1929.

“One movement that impressed me the first time I saw it, at the very beginning of the 1980s, was the Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 101. To this day, it remains an important element of inspiration in the constructions I envision. For me, this calibre captures the art of watchmaking in the early 1930s. It’s the culmination of all the developments and progress that had previously been made, with the goal of developing the smallest movement in the world.”

“Since the beginning of my career, I’ve always enjoyed working on Jaeger-LeCoultre watches. The solutions and architectures used by this manufacture have always seemed to me to be of a certain technological purity. The desire of these watchmakers to create such a small machine, whilst maintaining a high level of workmanship, was a real challenge.”

“Rather impressively, this movement is still being built today, so unique is its technical simplicity. Additionally, this mechanical movement was primarily worn, and continues to be worn, by women. This represents an interesting paradox, as most modern ladies' watches feature quartz movements. However, through their interest in wearing jewellery equipped with this mechanical heart, female clients have ensured the 101 calibre’s survival over a century later.”

“Due to its simplicity and efficiency, this is a movement I constantly look up to in my work as a watchmaker.”

One half of the famed complications manufacturer Renaud et Papi, Dominique Renaud has certainly worked on and been exposed to his fair share of bewildering movements. After all, Renaud was part of the team that helped to create the famous IWC Grande Complication ref. 3770. He also created an environment that would become a training ground for some of the finest watchmakers working today, including Robert Greubel, Stephen Forsey and the Grönefeld brothers.

For someone who’s worked on some of the most forward-thinking mechanics around, it should be no surprise that Renaud’s choice is anything but conventional. It’s the Bulova Accutron, one of the world’s earliest electronic watches, which used a 360 Hertz tuning fork instead of a balance wheel as the timekeeping element.

“I won’t tell you about complicated watches, which I worked on closely at Renaud & Papi, and which of course enchanted me during all these years. Rather, I wanted to share something completely different, which marked and inspired me during my life as a watchmaker. This watch is the Accutron Diapson 360 Hertz, presented by Bulova in 1960.”

“Personally, I discovered it when I was a teenager in the early 1970s. Production was already coming to an end with the arrival of quartz, which was about to turn everything upside down. I was initially impressed by the very colourful look of the Accutron, which revealed an electronic part linked to two huge ‘coil units’ surrounded by metal. The whole thing felt ultra-modern and hadn’t aged a day despite having been around for ten years.”

“In watchmaking school, in 1976, I had the opportunity to disassemble and discover the incredible functioning of the tuning fork regulator. Its vibrations are maintained by two electromagnets, which create a force at the end of the legs of the tuning fork. A small wheel, linked to the tuning forks, advances by one tooth with each oscillation. That one wheel alone has 300 teeth. You can imagine the pleasure of discovering, under my watchmaker’s loupe, this wheel with microscopic teeth, which gets used more than 360 times per second!”

“Of course, many friction and wear problems had to be overcome at this unimaginably high speed, which is an impressive technical feat. This inspired me a lot, and I filed a patent in 2015 for a fully mechanical self-starting tuning fork resonator. It also inspired me in other ways, notably in my research on escapements with my DR01 watch.”

“To come back to this extraordinary movement developed by Bulova, I would like to pay tribute to its inventor Max Hetzel, a Swiss engineer, who directed the Accutron project. For the time, it really was a true revolution, which broke all precision records. A little later, in 1969, Ébauche SA actually commercialised a movement operating along the same principles, with a tuning fork at 300 Hertz, the 9162, which was used by several Swiss brands. Though this might all feel very modern, it’s worth noting that the very first watchmaker to look into the principle, was the grandson of Breguet who produced a fully mechanical tuning fork clock in 1856. It’s now exhibited at the Chaux-de-Fonds museum.”

Gaël Petermann has always been fascinated with how horology used to be. The young watchmaker spent several years restoring pieces from the past, from Cartier mystery clocks to a Breguet tourbillon perpetual calendar retrograde. Through his restoration work, he began to build a respect for these long-lost creations and started wondering why pieces of this quality are so rarely found in this day and age. 

Eventually, Peterman and his close friend Florian Bédat chose to create a deadbeat seconds movement, one of the more obscure complications in horology, rarely found in contemporary watchmaking. The mechanism they adopted was designed in the 1940s by a teacher in a Swiss watchmaking school, which they came across whilst exploring archival documents at the library. With this nostalgia for how watchmaking used to be, it’s should come as no surprise that Petermann’s choice of favourite movement also looks back to the past.

“My fourth-year teacher at the Geneva Watchmaking School was the watchmaker of choice for Christie’s auction house. In May 2011, he invited us to an auction preview, so we asked if he could show us the Patek Philippe number 198'207. It’s a monopusher chronograph, with vertically positioned registers, which was made in 1928.”

“Like any watchmaker, I asked to see the movement. I’ve always liked chronographs, but this was one of the nicest ones I’d ever seen, despite my limited experience. Today, having handled a few more since then, I do think it remains one of the most beautiful wristwatch chronograph movements ever made.”

“It’s based on the Valjoux 23 ébauche, but extensively modified and finished to a much higher standard than any other adaptation. It’s an ideal size, at least for my small wrists, and each part of the caliber has been carefully designed. I also think the monopusher is the purest vision of this complication, with this one having a rather atypical display, where the sub-seconds are at 6 o’clock and the minutes counter is at 12 o’clock.”

“To top it off, this movement is found in an exceptional Patek Philippe case from the early 20th century, which does total justice to the movement, which is sadly hidden behind a closed caseback.”

The Austrian watchmaker has built quite a name for himself, alongside his wife Maria, as their eponymous independent brand has gained momentum over the last few years. Despite their relatively small operation, the Austrian watchmakers' work has been recognised by the wider horological community. Impressively, their watches have been nominated multiple times for the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, speaking to the ingenuity of their designs.

Prior to starting out on their own venture, Richard developed several notable complications during his formative years at IWC, including the split-second Doppelchronograph. It was during some of this work that Richard had a memorable interaction with his favourite movement, the Valjoux 7750.

“I disassembled my very first 7750 in the early ‘90s, right after I joined IWC. IWC, at that time had three products with the 7750: The Porsche Design Chronograph I 3702, the Da Vinci 3750 and the brand-new Grande Complication 3770. Günter Blümlein asked me in my first few days at the company if I could add a split second on to the movement and I replied: yes, Sir!”

“When I studied the movement in all its details, I felt attracted by the well thought through, yet simple, design of the Valjoux. It was known as reliable tractor, rather than being respected as an example of fine watchmaking. After all, it’s just a basic automatic movement. I was in my early 20s at the time and had limited experience with chronograph movements. The Valjoux 72 I’d disassembled in school and my father’s El Primero were the only chronograph movements I knew back then. I was fascinated by Edmond Capt’s progressive take on what I previously considered just old stuff, which was far too complex and old-fashioned for my taste.”

“The rest is history. After I completed my mission to include a split-second mechanism into the movement, I became the head of product engineering on the 790 – the reworked version of the 7750 – under the late Günter Blümlein, during what was really the golden era of IWC.

“Years later, after we established our own brand, we found out more details about the 7750 and when it was designed. Having joined Valijoux as his first ever job, Edmond Capt was faced by a deep crisis in the watch industry. His mission was to design a new automatic chronograph movement, with the basic principles to be taken from the 7733. To this day, this remains Valjoux’s first and only automatic chronograph caliber.”

'Capt was able to use some of the computers available at the University at Neuchâtel to help him with his calculations. As a result, the 7750 was the first watch movement of a new era, similar to the Boeing 777 which was the first commercial airliner designed with computer-aided design. That being said, despite the help he got in calculating things, Capt still had to do all the drawings the old fashioned way, with pen and paper.”

Our thanks to the five watchmakers who participated in this article, Philippe Dufour, Vianney Halter, Dominiqiue Renaud, Gaël Petermann and Richard Habring.