Blancpain's Villeret collection, which celebrates the roots of one of the world's oldest luxury watch brands, continues to innovate with a range of spectacular and practical complications. Here, we explore the collection's origins and its historical and contemporary highlights.
Text by Mark Bernardo
Published October 2021, 1
Author Thomas Wolfe is known for the quote "Thou shalt never return home again," which he coined as the title of a novel published in 1940 after a conversation with his friend, journalist Ella Winter. Had the pair discovered the luxury watch brand Blancpain, history might have been different, as Blancpain did return to the picturesque village of Villeret.
Blancpain currently exists as one of the three "prestige" brands within the Swatch Group, alongside Breguet and Jaquet Droz. Founded in 1735 in the village of Villeret, a Swiss Jura region near Bern, the brand has been based in Le Brassus in the Vallée de Joux since 1983. To modern watch enthusiasts, Blancpain is perhaps best known for its pioneering Fifty Fathoms diver's watch rather than its high complications or dress watches. However, Blancpain's passion for classic watchmaking has never wavered, and many of the brand's milestones can be found within the nostalgically named Villeret collection.
"Villeret is where Blancpain was born," says Marc A. Hayek, President and CEO of Blancpain (and President of Breguet and Jaquet-Droz). "The village of Villeret is part of our identity and the starting point of our watchmaking history. In the early 18th century, the village was home to hardworking, artisanal farmers. One of them, Jean-Jacques Blancpain, is listed as a watchmaker in the village records of 1735 and founded what is considered one of the world's oldest watch brands." The watch company, which Jean-Jacques Blancpain founded in his own home, remained family-run until Frédéric-Émile Blancpain's death in 1932. Under new ownership, the company was renamed Rayville, a homonym of "Villeret." In 1983, the company reverted to its original name, but more than two centuries after its founding, it relocated from Villeret to Le Brassus. In 1992, Blancpain was acquired by SSIH, which later became the SMH Group and then the Swatch Group.
Tracing the roots of the Villeret collection allows us to look back at the dawn of modern Blancpain. Initially, after moving to Le Brassus, Blancpain faced adversity amid the so-called "quartz crisis," when many traditional mechanical complications disappeared from the market, even halving the number of watches it produced. In 1983, the brand introduced the Caliber 6395, combining a complete calendar and moon phase display. Featuring separate apertures for the day and month, a date hand pointing to an outer display, and an anthropomorphic moon, the movement established many of the design codes still found in Villeret watches today, including applied Roman numerals, a two-stage bezel, and elegant hands reminiscent of sage leaves. Historically, it was the smallest movement ever to feature a traditional moon phase. "This piece was more than a homage to watchmaking tradition; it broke new ground in design, setting the stage for an entire industry to follow, and reintroducing complexity and interest to mechanical watches," Hayek said.
The Caliber 35, released in 1987, introduced the minute repeater, a mechanical complication that had been largely dormant until then. At the time, mechanical watchmaking had yet to experience a renaissance, and creating a mechanism like a minute repeater, especially in a wristwatch, was extremely challenging. Blancpain, however, set a new record in this area as well. Equipped with an automatic winding mechanism and hand-finished components thinner than a human hair, it created the world's smallest minute repeater movement at the time, measuring 23.9 mm in diameter and 4.85 mm thick. Two years later, in 1989, Blancpain became the first watchmaker to feature a flying tourbillon in a wristwatch. This meant that the tourbillon carriage, which houses the mechanical watch's regulator and escapement (invented to mitigate the effects of gravity in pocket watch movements), was supported solely by the baseplate, rather than the bridge as in the conventional case. This design allowed for an unobstructed view of the tourbillon carriage through the dial opening, but it required the innovative assembly of tiny ball bearings. The Caliber 23 that paved the way for this mechanism was not only the thinnest tourbillon at the time, but also boasted another feature that left no room for future generations to relate: an astonishing power reserve of approximately eight days, achieved by connecting three barrels.
Blancpain raised the bar for itself with the 1735, released in 1991. At the time, it was the world's most complicated automatic wristwatch in mass production. Featuring a minute repeater, tourbillon, perpetual calendar, split-seconds chronograph, and moon phase, this model was made up of 740 components and took approximately one year to produce each model. This is why Blancpain only produced a total of 30 1735s.
In 2004, rather than pushing the boundaries of watchmaking, Blancpain pursued practicality and created another invention that is now synonymous with Villeret timepieces, particularly the perpetual calendar. One of Blancpain's watchmakers noticed the correctors (correctors) on the sides of perpetual calendar watches and considered relocating them to a less visible position on the case for aesthetic reasons. Blancpain's innovative solution was to integrate the correctors, which adjust the day, date, month, and moon phase by operating levers built into the movement, under the lugs, making them invisible when worn. Furthermore, they can be operated with just a finger, without the need for tools, a patented mechanism. This discreet yet ingenious mechanism is now standard on Villeret watches.
Many luxury watch brands today have pursued a revival of the traditional mechanical complications so boldly pioneered by Blancpain in the 1980s. However, the Villeret collection remains a fertile ground for watchmaking, from small, practical pieces to complex movements. For example, the caliber 5235DF, completed in 2011, was unveiled as the Villeret 8 Days Half Time Zone. This movement boasts a power reserve of approximately eight days and allows the GMT function, usually in 60-minute increments, to be set to a second time zone in 30-minute increments, a concern for global travelers, allowing accurate display of local time in places like India and South Australia.
Among the Villeret collection, GMT watches excel in practicality. Blancpain also offers practical combinations of these with other mechanisms. In 2002, it introduced its first GMT model, combining a dual-time display with a complete calendar. The day and month were displayed at 12 o'clock, the date displayed via a scale on the dial edge and a gold serpentine hand, and Blancpain's signature playful moon smiled upon it at 6 o'clock. Unlike annual and perpetual calendars, simpler complete calendars require frequent attention to maintain accuracy. In short months, the date must be manually advanced on the first day of the following month. This model adds an extra layer of complexity by displaying a second time zone on a scale from 1 to 24 inside the Roman numeral hour markers, indicated by a red-tipped pointer hand.
