The birth of the Tourbillon Souverain project.

Journe made his first tourbillon wristwatch in 1991. It's very easy to remember the date, all you need to do is look at the watch dial, where you'll find the engraved inscription: "F. P. Journe 11/91”. It's important to note that this thoroughly thought-out movement and watch design laid the foundation for the first signed Tourbillon Souverain which appeared eight years later and all subsequent versions without any significant changes.

There are currently only three known pre-series prototype pieces. The first 11/91 watch is in Journe's own collection. According to acollectedman.com, the appearance of the second piece is almost identical to the 11/91 watch, while the third piece numbered 15/93 differs in how the power reserve is designed and the tourbillon carriage with adjustable weight. The carriage on the very first example had a small hole on the edge which was also intended for poising.

What makes Journe's early tourbillons particularly interesting is their use of the remontoir d'égalité. It was extremely rare for this mechanism to be used with tourbillons up until that point, as the whole idea behind using a tourbillon was to optimize timekeeping accuracy, so it wasn't accompanied by additional devices to achieve the same goal.

Nevertheless, some watchmakers began thinking about combining these two mechanisms, the first of whom were Derek Pratt and François-Paul Journe. François-Paul Journe was the first to do it in a wristwatch. His construction was an unconventional one. The remontoir d'égalité generally relies on a secondary spring, almost always a spiral remontoir, but Journe chose to use a flat spring for his watches.

In an interview, Journe talked about the moment when he settled on this type: the idea suddenly came to him when he was winding museum clocks. A small regulator with a remontoir d’égalité sparked the idea to create his own with a flat "blade" spring between the going-train and tourbillon.

Tourbillon Souverain "Souscription"

In the late 1990s, Journe drew up a list of clients whom he could offer these unique pieces. Journe could have kept this as a fairly convenient side job, but his interests lay elsewhere. He wanted to create a dynamic collection in a process of non-stop development, where he could bring his ideas and inventions to life in each new model he introduced.

However, the transition from serving collectors and brands to this business model would require a fairly hefty amount of funding, and although he had secured contracts with the likes of Cartier, Journe clearly didn't have enough start-up capital. The idea of how to overcome this obstacle was given to him by Camille Berthet, the entrepreneur and current owner of the brand Charles Oudin.

Over lunch one day, Berthet suggested taking a leaf out of Abraham-Louis Breguet's book, who sold timepieces on a subscription basis back in his day. They were literally referred to as subscription timepieces: Montre de Souscription. We know that Breguet asked clients to make a down payment which amounted to a quarter of the full cost of the finished piece.

Journe asked clients to pay 50 % in advance for the watches from the limited 20-piece Tourbillon Souverain à Remontoir d'Egalité series, and rewarded them by offering a 50 % discount off the planned retail price. This meant that the watches now known as Tourbillon Souverain "Souscription" could be purchased for CHF 27,500 — a steal compared to the prices quoted at today's auctions for the model. 

In any case, the subscription model allowed Journe to raise the funds necessary to start producing his watch series. The Tourbillon Souverain "Souscription" differs from Journe's pre-series prototype tourbillon wristwatches. Journe decided against using a Breguet-style dial with Roman numerals and Breguet hands for the hours and minutes.

He opted for his own design instead: the signature teardrop-shaped hands we now find on all of Journe's watches, and his own dial design, right down to the numerals for the hours and minutes, which he inscribed himself by hand. The recognizable metal frame around the dial for the hours and minutes was given a more fluid outline and the inscription "Invenit et Fecit" appeared on the dial, along with a logo with a new outline chosen by Journe himself.

The case demonstrated a high level of finishing, and instead of the typical cylindrical winding crown with coin edging, a new "flat" one appeared with a coiled "rope-edge" crown style. On the caseback of the Tourbillon Souverain "Souscription", we can find an engraved signature with information about the watch in the same format used on all modern watches by F. P. Journe.

The most important thing you should know about this engraving is that it was rendered by hand, most likely by Journe himself, which is why it's characteristically shallow. It really does differ from the inscriptions engraved around the rim of the caseback on all subsequent watches, where the relief is deep because the watches are laser engraved rather than hand-engraved.

All of these changes honed and developed the design of Journe's prototype wristwatch tourbillons but their general character and recognizability was preserved. In particular, they retained the wonderful texture of the dial's base plate made of satin-brushed yellow gold.

It's also worth mentioning that all 20 pieces from the Tourbillon Souverain "Souscription" series are numbered in the upper half of the dial, starting from 1/20 and ending with 20/20. Journe hasn't numbered any more watch dials since then, using the rim of the caseback instead.

Like all the watches made by the brand up until 2004, the movements housed in Souscription watches are made of rhodium-plated brass, while the bridge of the additional wheel for the remontoir d'égalité mounted on the dial side is conical in shape. Collectors refer to the Souscription series as the first-generation "Ref. T" Tourbillon Souverain.

Tourbillon Souverain Ref. T

Launching the first Tourbillon Souverain "Souscription" allowed Journe to raise enough funds to produce an unlimited model called Tourbillon Souverain Ref. T, which was produced from 1999 to 2003. After that, the transition to rose-gold movements took place with Ref. TN. All examples of Ref. T were fitted with the early type of hand-wound caliber 1498 movements with their mainplate and bridges made of rhodium-plated brass.

The first generation "Souscription" series was followed by three generations of Ref. T which exhibit subtle differences in design. The watches were available in two basic design versions: with a platinum case or in 18-carat rose gold. Second-generation Ref. T watches were given dials with the inscriptions “Invenit et Fecit”, “F. P. Journe” and “Remontoir d’Egalité”.

Like the first-generation "Souscription" watches, the cock for the remontoire is rounded. The third-generation watches stood out for their enlarged numerals on the scale for the power reserve: they became roughly the same size as the minute markings on the main subdial, while the remontoir cock lost its volume and was flattened out.

Fourth-generation watches stand out from earlier versions for their smaller screws used to secure the dial plate. Larger screws can be seen on almost the first hundred tourbillons — roughly the combined total of second- and third-generation watches released.

At Christie's Art of F. P. Journe auction, a third-generation platinum Tourbillon Souverain (No. 087/01T) with large screws on its dial sold for CHF 768,600, while a fourth-generation Tourbillon Souverain numbered 228/03T sold for CHF 504,000, i.e. 264 Swiss francs less, and these are watches from the same line with just and two years between them and 140 pieces based on their case numbers!

That's the price people are willing to pay for tiny details — the size of the screws securing the dial. Nevertheless, all of these early pieces with rhodium-plated brass movements are now acknowledged to have been an important milestone in the brand's history, and that's why they achieve extremely high prices at today's auctions.

This definitely applies to the "Ruthenium" series — a limited run of 99 pieces with dials that had a dark-gray ruthenium finish — the final chapter of François-Paul Journe's brass movements.

If you consider the estimate that over two hundred earlier Ref. T pieces were made, the 99-piece Tourbillon Souverain Ruthenium Edition represents a sizable portion of the overall number of Tourbillon Souverain watches produced with brass movements. This isn't enough to put collectors off though, who bid enthusiastically for watches from the "Ruthenium" series, driving up hammer prices.

They've already surpassed the one-million mark: at an auction held by Christie's in November 2022, a custom piece marked No. 63/99-01T which was personalized for Jean Todt with his initials J.T. printed on the dial sold for CHF 1,083,600.

One of the rarest Ref. T watches is the Tourbillon Souverain "Labyrinthe", which appears to be François-Paul Journe's first experiment in Métiers d'Art. It was made in 2001 as the show piece for the International Jewelry & Watch Exhibition in Bahrain.

This model was offered in the following options: a rose-gold case with a white-gold dial, or a platinum case with a dial made of either rose gold or yellow gold. Each configuration was released in very limited numbers.

Previosly part I

Credits taken from: www.christies.com, www.phillips.com, www.sothebys.com, Fred Merz / Lundi 13.