Jaeger-LeCoultre: Time is Silver and Ticking is Gold

The Jaeger-LeCoultre story begins in the 16th century with Pierre LeCoultre fleeing religious persecution in France for the safety of Switzerland. He settled in the canton of Vaud, and his son built a church in 1612 that would soon form the basis of the village Le Sentier. The LeCoultre family was established in the area, and Antoine LeCoultre was born in 1803. In 1833 at the age of 30 he opened a watchmaking workshop in the village, and in 1844 invented the Millionométre, the world’s most precise measuring device at the time. Just three years later he invented a system to wind and set watches without a key, revolutionizing the industry. 

In the meantime, LeCoultre timepieces had acquired a reputation for superior quality in Switzerland and beyond, earning the workshop owner a gold medal for his precision and mechanization at the 1851 London World Fair. Antoine LeCoultre was not only a craftsman and inventor, but also a visionary entrepreneur: at the time, activities in the same sector of trade were often scattered among different workshops, and he had the idea of bringing them all together under the same roof. In 1866 he founded the LeCoultre & Cie factory, with his 24 year old son Elie. The family workshop became a full company, and by 1870 employed 500 people, had created over 350 calibers, more than a third of which had a chronograph (time recorder) function, and had launched the first partly automated manufacturing processes for ‘complication movements’, or watch functions beyond the display of hours and minutes.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, the Alsatian watchmaker Edmond Jaeger launched a competition for the major Swiss watch brands to see who could develop and produce the flattest watches. Jaeger had been based in Paris since 1880, where he had created the first on-board chronometers for the Navy and mechanisms for the jeweler Cartier. Jacques-David LeCoultre, Antoine's grandson, presented the LeCoultre 145 caliber in 1907, and inaugurated a long collaboration between the his family’s business, Jaeger, and Cartier, based on exclusive contracts. 

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After Edmond Jaeger’s death in 1922, the already well-established relationship between the Parisian company and its Swiss counterpart intensified and led to the creation of the Jaeger-LeCoultre brand in 1937, under which the legendary Reverso, originally designed to withstand shocks during polo matches, the Futurematic, the Powermatic, the Memovox, the Master, and the Gyrotourbillon models were marketed. In the United States, however, several models continued to be sold under the sole name LeCoultre until the mid-1980s, causing some confusion among American dealers and collectors.

Jaeger-LeCoultre was acquired in 2000 by the Richemont group, which is based in Geneva and specializes in the luxury industry; other brands in its stable include Vacheron Constantin, Montblanc, and Cartier. Under the direction of Daniel Riedo, the Jaeger-LeCoultre brand celebrated the Reverso’s 85th anniversary in 2016 with a new model that is ‘respectful of the legend’ but is now equipped with an automatic caliber. The company is still noted for its flawless merging of traditional know-how with state-of-the-art technology. 

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The company has launched over 1,200 calibers, including the 101 (the smallest ever in its category, with about 100 components for only one gram and a 3.4 mm thickness) and has issued nearly 400 patents. Launched in 2009, the Hybris Mechanica Grande Sonnerie with some 1,300 components and around 50 complications is the brand's most expensive watch strap, at over €1.25 million ($1.46 million). This doesn’t even come close, however, to Graff Jeweller’s infamous Hallucination and its 110 carats of diamonds, an absolute record at more than €50 million ($58.5 million). If this exquisite piece makes you feel pangs of envy, it may be important to remember that no matter the number of carats, time is still more precious than diamonds.

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