F.P. Journe: Tourbillon Souverain Régence
8 January 2018The Tourbillon Souverain has been my first love among F.P. Journe watches.
I officially joined the watch world in 2007, but I’ve grown up with watchmaking all around me since I was a kid. Not easy to impress you’ll say… I naively thought so too! Until the day I had one of those masterpieces in my hands.
The first feature that caught my attention were the dead seconds, I never saw a mechanical watch with the seconds hand beating like a quartz one. As the technicians were explaining to me about the remontoir d’égalité and all the other technical features of the Tourbillon Souverain, I slowly understood that I was witnessing something extraordinary.
My first thoughts were: “Who is François-Paul Journe?”, and “Why does he want to improve the chronometry of such a complex escapement like a Tourbillon, which is supposed to be super precise?”
To answer my questions I started to study about the man behind that fascinating creation, who -I discovered- founded his company by creating those Tourbillon watches for his clients, who were actually financing him by purchasing a piece of history.
Everything I was reading about F.P. Journe was extremely captivating, he actually presented his first Tourbillon Souverain in AHCI’s Baselworld booth in 1991, where it took the attention only of people like Gunther Blumlein (who was leading Les Manufactures Horlogères owned by Mannesmann), and few collectors. It was not a success, it was not yet his time.
It was only in 1999, when Journe’s watches started to be appreciated. He showed at the Basel Fair a reworked version of the Tourbillon Souverain, and the prototype of his first Chronomètre a Resonance… meanwhile he was already working on an automatic base movement that was allowing each complication to be completely integrated, and not modular, today knows as Octa. I mean, that’s mental! How can a one-man Manufacture be so productive and creative?! The answer is crystal clear, if that one man is F.P.Journe…
The Tourbillon Souverain à remontoir d’égalité avec seconde morte replaces the 1999 Tourbillon Souverain, which already had the remontoire, but not the “seconde morte”; dead-beat seconds. Now let’s go back to my question, “Why add a Remontoire and the dead seconds to a tourbillon escapement?”
There are two schools of thought: the first affirms that the Tourbillon has been invented by Breguet in XIX Century to counter effect the gravity phenomenon in pocket watches, enclosing escapement and balance wheel in a rotating cage. F.P. Journe’s thought, after studying Breguet’s work for many years, is that the Tourbillon necessary to mix the oils in the regulating organ better. 1800’s oils were not like today’s ones, which are exceptional and unknown at that time. So what’s the purpose of the Tourbillon in a contemporary wrist watch?
The Tourbillon is -and will always be- an incredible challenge that every Master Wachmaker would like to achieve. And Journe did it, in his own way.
Journe’s research of chronometric precision led him to add the remontoir d’égalité, which is a constant force device system, that takes from the spring the same amount of energy during the entire duration of its charge, and the dead-beat seconds, which is an independent seconds system that allows the seconds hand to be motionless during the whole duration of the second, indicating the next one when the first has actually gone past.
One of Journe’s latest versions of the Tourbillon Souverain features the so called Régence dial, inspired by the Labyrinth and Régence Tourbillon Souverain, created for a super limited number of collectors in early 2000s. The Régence Tourbillon has circular hand-engravings on the whole dial surface, which is entirely produced at Les Cadraniers De Genève, Journe’s dial Manufacture. Journe’s research on Louis XVI furniture ornamentation and pendulettes clocks from 18th Century were the inspirations behind the Régence motif.
The Tourbillon Souverain Régence comes in a 40mm red gold case with red or white gold dials, and is only available through F.P. Journe’s boutiques and Espaces, and the Italian one is at GMT – Great Masters of Time, in Milan.
By Jacopo Corvo