So I believe we were talking about watches! These are for some very special people - you'll have to read to the end to find out who they are going to.
Willy continued to lead me through the various stages of production and assembly. As he said again and again - "our grandfathers don't work here". What was truly astonishing to me was the sheer volume of production performed at such an exacting level of quality. At every step of the way, there are MULTIPLE quality control checks. If any part of the watch doesn't meet the exacting specifications? Back it goes until it does!
But I would have to agree emphatically, that all of that attention to detail is worth it! There are a lot of "haute/luxury" watch brands out there, and sometimes it is difficult to understand why they cost what they do. As Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland - "There's no 'there' there". Not so with Girard-Perregaux - having seen the amount of work, care and attention that goes into
every Girard-Perregaux and JeanRichard - I can assure you that you get even more than what you pay for!
By the way - this is my ALL-TIME dream watch! I am proud to say that one of these
did not find its way into my bag! The temptation, I can assure you, was strong! So I will need to start the GP Vintage 1945 fund!
And this one is timeless. This is not a fad, it is not of
the moment - it is of EVERY moment. This is a watch that will be passed from father to son.
And JeanRichard really is a manufacture brand! It is easy to discount JeanRichard as a poor relation - but this is really not so. This is obvious in walking through the manufacture - there is not a "B" team or a JR/GP division of labor or know-how. Both fantastic brands are worked on by the "A" team.
And those chronographs at the beginning of today's installment? They are 30 year service awards for a certain transportation manufacturer in Turin. Let's see... I'm 43 now, maybe I could still squeeze 30 years in...
More to come - including a history lesson from the Professor himself, Willy Schweizer.
the above GP chronograph is very very nice indeed!
ReplyDeleteCan you post a larger image of this beauty?
I have just been working on a dress watch, checking lots of great vintage dress watches. Its all about relative size of bezel, diameter, lug size, crown size etc to make a piece really great and outstanding. This one does it really fine.....