Independents

A chance encounter....

 

A chance encounter yesterday gave me a chance to get to know a new independent brand: A. Favre et Fils

The Favre family from La Locle has a long tradition of watchmaking.  The first mention of watchmaking in the family being the apprenticeship papers of Abraham Favre in 1718.  In 1792 another Abraham Favre (the third generation) associated with his 2 sons Frédéric et Henry-Louis to form the company Abraham Favre et Fils (A. Favre and Sons).

The company was active in markets around the world and in the 20th century gave particular attention to India.  In it's best years Favre sold around 400'000 watches a year. Members of the family remained at the head of the company through 6 further generations until it was sold to the German group VDO in 1976.  Recently we have seen some interesting offerings from Favre-Leuba a company which, unfortunately, has become one of the victims of the present financial crisis.

It is now Laurent Favre, from the 10th generation of watchmakers in the Favre family, who has formed a company again under the old family name A. Favre & Fils and is presenting his first new watch model.  His goal is to continue the family tradition that he has inherited and to uphold the spirit of innovation, quality and excellence.

A chance meeting in the village of Le Lieu in the Vallée de Joux gave me the unexpected opportunity to meet Mr. Favre and see two of his watches "in the metal".

The Watches

The Phoenix 10.1 is the first watch of the new A. Favre & Fils company.  This watch has a unique big date function.  The numbers 0...9 are arranged in an arc on the right side of the dial.  A second concentric arc indicates the date with an arrow for 1...9, a 1 in the proper position for days 10...19, a 2 in the propoer position for days 20...29 and (who would have quessed it?) a 3 for the days 30 and 31.  This neat date indication requires only 2 moving parts.

The minute and hour hands are slit in the middle, the hand not covering the current time, but letting it appear in the open middle portion.

The gold case is very elegant with the sharp junctions made possible by todays precision machining. The case is actually made of 9 pieces fitted tightly together.

The Movement

The movement, the DB1334 Henry (named after Henry A. Favre, Laurent's grandfather and 8th generation Favre watchmaker), is a special development for AF&F with two barrels giving 84 hours of autonomy.  The double ratchets remind of high-end pocket watch movements of the good old days, the regulator has a swans-neck and the jewel settings with capstones are screwed in.  The decoration is top-notch with polished beveling and very flamboyant radial côtes de Gèneve.

Note the two color decoration of the movement on the right.  The top surface is plated in black rhodium, the angles and flanks in white rhodium.  This is a very special and complicated decoration technique that has seldom been done before.  This involves doing the surface decoration and plating, masking that surface and continuing the beveling and flank decoration and plating.  When the surface masking is then removed a perfect line can be seen between the top surface finishing in black rhodium and the bevel and flank finishing in white rhodium.  It doesn't really jump out at you, but it does heighten the contrast between the côtes and the polished beveling.

Below, one color

Below, two color

I think this is a very successful new watch design.
I wish Laurent the best of luck with his new endever and hope these are just the first of many new and interesting designs from A. Favre & Fils in the future.
Don