Guilloché: Handcrafted Magic

Considering below why guilloché has become an integral part of Haute Horlogerie.

Almost every prominent manufacture now finishes its watches according to standard artistic cannons. Hand-engraved dials are a narrow niche, making it all the more prestigious. The historic connection guilloché shares with architecture is plain to see: strong geometric patterns coupled with ornate floral motifs. It can only be described as a reinterpretation of decorative stucco in a miniature form.

The great Abraham-Louis Breguet was the first to decorate his dials with guilloché, and it wasn't just for aesthetic appeal. It was unbelievably difficult for even the most skillful of masters to achieve a perfectly even surface on their dials at that time, especially after they'd been painted. This is where guilloché came in very handy, as it did a great job at hiding tiny uneven patches in its "folds".

It also made it easier to tell the time by breaking up the glare of light reflected on the surface. Another undeniable advantage this engraving offered was that it effectively served as a manufacturer's signature. Ever since watchmaking began to be practiced as a craft, there have always been forgeries made of great pieces.

Masters had limited tools at their disposal so they protected their work from forgery by hand. There were far less talented engravers around than the number of impostors eager to imitate their work. Abraham-Louis Breguet saw all the advantages this form of engraving had to offer and developed a number of signature patterns.

 Among them the legendary Clous de Paris (also referred to as hobnailing pattern), Côtes de Genève (Geneva waves or stripes) and Rayonné (sunray pattern). The set of instructions which accompanied each timepiece provided a highly detailed explanation of how these patterns were engraved. 

At the same time, Breguet would occasionally include some intricate engravings to best protect his timepieces from being copied. The set of instructions which accompanied each timepiece provided a highly detailed explanation of how these patterns were engraved. 

Not only could it add shiny facets to pieces of jewelry, it also made scratches and dents which would inevitably appear on the soft gold look less noticeable. Sculptors, jewelers and carvers would apply guilloché by hand, but watchmakers began using engraving machines for engine turning thanks to the very same Breguet, which were a hybrid form of a turning lathe and milling center with a muscular drive.

The engraving was performed on a dial held in the centering chuck of the rose engine. A rack or a straight bar with teeth (crémaillère) was used for straight and wavy lines and rosettes for concentric ones. That's how a solution was found to the problem of creating grooves that were equal in depth and maintaining a fixed distance between the pattern's lines.

The pattern's grooves would then be filled with lacquer or enamel. By the way, these lathes often find their way into watch auctions and tend not to be too expensive. The miniature pattern's quality and complexity as well as with the thickness of its lines, which are often only a tenth of a millimeter thick, all depend on the hands of the engraver doing the engine turning — the lathe is merely a tool.

The master needs to ensure the machine doesn't cut too deep and that the same amount of force is applied to cut each line. Computers have made guillochage much easier for modern engravers. While only truly gifted masters could conceive and etch out their own patterns in the past, there are now special programs which can do that for engravers.

However, there are still many modern manufacturers who prefer to use machines which are very similar to the technology used in the 18th century, the only difference being that they're now powered by electricity rather than muscles and elbow grease. For one thing, watches with dials made according to the classic cannon are still fairly rare.

Pieces are manufactured for strictly limited edition series, and spending massive funds to develop and obtain the latest electronic 5D manufacturing systems would be unprofitable to say the least. Secondly, today's manufacturers have learned how to make dials where the surface of the face is initially covered with programmed patterns in advance using crude stamping.

This obviously reduces the devalues the traditional craft, but it's a great help for the mass market. The current situation with guilloché is the same as it is for modern skeleton watches. Nobody has been cutting openings in ready-made solid main plates for a long time now, nor have they been shaping each movement's bridges by hand — they're born skeletonized.

The list of this year's guilloché masterpieces includes some pieces which deserve to be highlighted: the Patek Philippe Ref. 7040/250G-001 Rare Handcrafts Minute Repeater for ladies decorated with spiral guilloché coated in translucent blue enamel.

Or the Andersen Genève Quotidiana with a Losanges Magiques pattern that has actually been engine-turned by that by hand; the Bovet 19Thirty Great Guilloché which has also been hand-engraved with the floral Fleurisanne guilloché pattern; Ulysse Nardin's Classico Hour Glass Ginza 25th Anniversary with radial guilloché; and the new Parmigiani Tonda PF collection with the Grain d'Orge guilloché dial pattern.

It speaks for itself when even A. Lange & Söhne who made it a principle not to use guilloché in the past (the German manufacturers aren't big fans) have now introduced a Langematik Perpetual model with radial guilloché on its chapter ring.

Examples of watches which you could say were made for guilloché are the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak with the signature "Tapisserie" pattern, as well as Le Régulateur Louis Erard x atelier oï — now that's a timeless classic.