Baselworld/SIHH

ANDERSEN GENEVE

Jean Calvin

Jean Calvin and the Horology – What kind of relationship ?

ANDERSEN GENEVE has created the Montre à Tact CALVIN 1509-2009
commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the reformer.

Rigour and punctuality=Horology in Geneva.

Patrick VESNIER has executed the fantastic miniature painting.

Max ENGAMMARE describes in the attached history the origin of horology in Geneva due to the Reformation.

The Montre à Tact of ANDERSEN GENEVE, the tactful watch, is a wristwatch that allows the wearer to read time discreetly through a window situated between the attaches at « 6 », without moving his wrist. The front plate is decorated with a unique miniature artwork. The back is engraved with a dedication to Jean Calvin and his influence on the history and the development of horology in Geneva.

Jean CALVIN 1509-2009

Montre à Tact of ANDERSEN GENEVE

Rigour and Punctuality=Horology in Geneva

by Max ENGAMMARE

From the cradle to the grave, from school to church, from quarrels between neighbours unto financial investments, CALVIN had profoundly marked the daily life in Geneva in the XVIth Century. The ecclesiastical organization as administration of the city bore his stamp. CALVIN was in Geneva a pastor and a professor of theology, but he was a pastor and a professor of great power. Right from the moment of his return to Geneva in 1541, he started promulgating ecclesiastical ordinances which compelled the Genevese to adopt a rigorous discipline and a new perception of time: punishment for late arrival at worship, educating children to punctuality, a new form of calendar, etc.

CALVIN used to repeat in his preaching that God was always watching his people and that on the Day of Judgement everybody would have to render an account of every minute of his life. It happened to this austere society in Geneva that goldsmiths and watchmakers were coming from France as religious refugees in the middle of the 1550ies. Henceforth, the relation with time became so important that in 1561 new ecclesiastical ordinances, even harder than before, had to be introduced for latecomers. In 1581 the authorities ordered that even the sand hour-glasses be replaced by other ones of three quarters of an hour to reduce the length of worship. Thus, the horology could develop and train up craftsmen ready to produce an excellent work.

The first ordinances about horology in 1601 required the realization of two masterpieces to obtain the mastership: "a small alarm-watch to wear around the neck" and "a rectangular clock to put on the table".

Now, in order to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of CALVIN'S Birthday and to recall his influence on respecting rigorously the hour and the minute, ANDERSEN GENEVE is presenting

a new masterpiece, a Montre à Tact CALVIN 1509-2009, as effigy of the great man.

Original text in French by the historian and editor Max ENGAMMARE,
who is the author, among other works, of L'Ordre du temps. L'Invention de
la ponctualité au XVIe siècle (Genève, Droz, 2004.).

Translation into English by Helene Andersen.

March 2009