Piaget

Piaget: Beneath the Surface of an Integrated Manufacture

 

 

 

Regular followers of this forum will be familiar with the origins of the Piaget family and Manufacture.

 

Click URL that follows for the History: piaget.watchprosite.com

 

 

 

 

We have often seen old photos of the Manufacture at La Cote au Fees from 1947 but alas, the older workshops in the family farm house or the village inn and chapel (1874 - 1946) are not available.

 

 

 

Some people may argue that such old history is not relevant today as any investor can purchase shiny new CNC milling machines and automated robot tools that can achieve remarkable precision in forming metal parts.

I think that such modern tools are indispensible in the pursuit of excellence. After all, most of the historical giants of horology earned their place by inventing or adopting the best technology or processes of their day. The key attribute of a true manufacture that continues to innovate and excel is difficult to describe.

 

Georges Piaget summed it up in his famous phrase: "Faire toujours mieux qu'il n'est nécessaire ".

"Always do more than is necessary ".

 

 

On the best Piaget watches today, a similar phrase is engraved as a reminder that you hold 'the-best-of-the-best' in your hand.

Is that motto true? Or just an urban legend of modern marketing hype and spin?

After all, it is easy today to just hire any Tom, Dick or Harriet to be a marketing or PR director without the spirit of watchmaking nor of Passion, Opinion and Information.

 

 

 

 

Imagine the frisson of excitement that coursed through me when I glimpsed a little bit of the Spirit of Piaget recently.

Ostensibly, it was just a battered old cardboard box. It was not even a pretty box and had water damage.

 

A long-time Piaget employee whose offices are under the eaves of the old factory roof became aware of the sound of water dripping and investigated the leak by exploring the roof.  He found this box in a damp corner of an unused section of the roof space. Over the years, old stuff must have been moved around and forgotten.

 

 

 

 

Easily forgotten.  After all, the world around Piaget has been through wars in Korea and Vietnam, Cuban missile crisis, assassination of world leaders....

 

....Beatlemania and L.S.D..........

 

 

....The jet-set, mini-skirts, the Pill, free love....

 

 

....moon landings, quartz crisis, ABBA, oil shortage, Rocky movies, Berlin hole-in-the-wall, U.S.S.R. collapse, economic boom and busts, BRIC and hopefully, even North Korea 2013.

 

 

The Box:

 

 

1911 ? 

1910 ? 

The Piaget family motto is true and that goes to the heart.

The heart of the Manufacture and the heart of the Piaget community...designers, watchmakers, engineers, collectors and...heck - even the marketeers...need to care about this dirty old box.

 

Without heart, this industry is just consumerism and bowing to the monkey bean counters.

Without passion, this forum is just a museum to glories past.

 

This box means a great deal to the old employee who found it.

It is his connection to a manufacture and the village that he loves and will die to protect. His greatest joy was when the grubby box was revealed to the remaining Piaget family members who had led the Manufacture before.

 

As they held it, the atmosphere was palpable and as they touched the family Spirit, was it just imagination?

Or the wind whistling through the attic?

Or did their venerable ancestor whisper:-

"Faire toujours mieux qu'il n'est nécessaire"............. 

 

 

 

 
World's Thinnest Piaget automatic minute repeater

 

 

Posted by MTF

(Piaget Owner and Sentimentalist)

 

 

Post-script doubts:

Are these the ramblings of idealism?

Shall we just print the facts and photos from the new watches' press releases?

It’s just a smelly old cardboard box; does it matter in the real world where You live?

 

 

This message has been edited by MTF on 2013-08-26 16:48:16

With no history or story to tell, it will not survive. 

This old cardboard box represents the Piaget spirit in all its essence, and the worker who found it must have been thrilled.  It's like a me climbing up to my attic and finding an old lost box filled with goodies, memories, and treasure.

Heart warming post MTF.

Cheers,
Anthony

Thanks Anthony.

 

Sometimes we get comments from other brands (NOT Piaget that still has an archivist and really old ex-employees living next door to the factory).

One Brand XYZ executive said to me: "Forget talking about our vintage watches; we don't sell vintage watches. Tell the public about my watches in the shops!"

 

Regards,

MTF

 "Forget talking about our vintage watches; we don't sell vintage watches. Tell the public about my watches in the shops!" 

I'd like to think that this viewpoint was rare but I've heard the exact same thing from other brand representatives as well. 

Thank goodness PuristSPro isn't just a substitute mouthpiece for brands...We should continue to tell it as it is...opinions matter.

Best, Mike

. . . this man?  The gentleman on the right, receiving the box. 

I met him, once.  And therein lies a tale.

* * *

It was in the early fall of 1985, downtown Los Angeles.  It may well have been a Thursday, as that was when the Original Pantry . . .

 

. . . served corned beef and cabbage, a favorite in those days.  I found a seat at the end of the counter, and after ordering lunch, opened my copy of Robert Caro's Path to Power, the exhaustive first installment of his biography of Lyndon Johnson.  Shortly afterward, a man walked in and pulled up the next seat.  He was an older gentleman but vigorous, and carried himself erectly without a hint of his age, which I guessed to be in his seventies.

I don't remember how the conversation started, but it was over current affairs, and distinctly remember discussing either Vatican or Papal developments then consuming the headlines.  As we were winding down our meals, the conversation took an unexpected turn.  He asked if I was familiar with Freemasonry, and pleasantly surprised by my unusually well-informed reply; as a history buff, I'd made a connection between The Craft and several critical events, which apparently pleased him to no end.  He then asked if I was interested in learning more about the fraternity, to which I expressed surprise - we had just met in a café, after all.  His reply was telling: after noticing my choice of reading material and as a result of our conversation, he felt comfortable raising the topic, and asked for my address, which I gave.

A week later, a letter came in the mail.  It was from the gentleman I'd shared a meal with, and typed on letterhead from a business firm (or, so I assumed at the time).  The text of the letter was an invitation to a casual meeting at a lodge somewhere in Los Angeles.  As it happened, though, I was just about to leave LA for an extended trip overseas, and never replied; it would've been awkward to accept his invitation but then decline any further involvement.  After returning from overseas a year later, I recall looking over the letter again, but then tossing it out as it would've been equally awkward to contact him after a year absence.

Time passed, and the incident became nothing but a distant memory.

* * *

Fast-forward to February, 2011.  I happened to be in a part of Los Angeles that I hadn't visited in decades, the city of Whittier.  It so happened that I had a bit of free time on my hands, and while driving along Whittier Boulevard, passed by a pawn shop.  Now, I must've driven past a thousand such places over the years, but this one inexplicably beckoned.  After dropping off my lady friend at her appointment, I returned to the pawn shop, and walked in.  The story was told on our Omega forum . . .    

 
omega.watchprosite.com 0/

. . . back in April of that year.  What I didn't share, though, was the inscription on the back.

I understood the significance of the engraving.  This watch had been presented to the Worshipful Master of a State Lodge for completing a year of service as Grand Master of that State's Masonic Lodge.  No mention of the State, though, and the name Leo E Anderson meant nothing to me at the time. 

A year later, on a Saturday afternoon in February, 2012, I again had a bit of free time on my hands, and the Seamaster was on my wrist that week.  Just out of curiosity, I decided to search online for information on Leo.  The first inquiry brought up an obituary . . .
 
www.google.com 38

. . . from the Los Angeles Times.  There were many clues in the obit that lead to further discoveries, including legal briefs he'd written and are now part of the curriculum in California law schools.  The tastiest tidbit, though, was the name of the law firm he represented, Meserve, Mumper, and Hughes.  I plugged the name of the law firm into Google search and came up with their website, which had their address in downtown Los Angeles.

Not ten minutes walking distance from the Original Pantry.

Epiphany.

For the first time in decades, memories of the meeting with the old gentleman came flooding back.  His name was Leo - that much I clearly remembered.  Could this possibly be the same man?  The meeting place, his age (he would've been 83 at the time), name, and the subject of our conversation all matched.  Feverishly, I looked thru reams of entries, until discovering the photo posted above, from the University of Southern California archives.

It was the very same man.  Younger in the photo than when I met him, of course, but the visage and profile were identical.  A watch is apparent, but unfortunately, the date of the photo is March, 1958, and the Seamaster would've been awarded at the Grand Lodge meeting in October of that year, so it's not the same Seamaster on his wrist.  Still, the sheer magnitude of the coincidence was, to say the least, utterly fantastic.  What are the odds of having a chance meeting with a complete stranger, and then coming face to face with him a quarter of a century later with his watch on your wrist?

Incalculable, I'd say.

* * *

Mechanical watches occupy a unique place in our lives.  They are objects, to be sure - not flesh and blood, not animate.  Unlike any other material object, though, they convey a sense of time.  Time: universal, practically undefinable, yet ever present.  Nothing seems to carry the memories of the past more deeply than a watch, pocket or wrist.  We remember our fathers and grandfathers by them.  Chances are that a watch was a gift that marked a rite of passage.  It may have been only a gift at the time, but means so much more as the years go by, and even more when the person who granted the gift passes on.  A watch is not just a machine that tells time; it is a repository - of memory, of fondness, of ourselves.

That box found in the attic is not just a collection of antique artifacts.  It is - as much as an inanimate object can be - living history. 

The Piaget family must be immensely proud of, and touched by, the discovery.

Sentimentally,

Art 

 






This message has been edited by Dr No on 2014-05-15 11:13:48

there are posts on this forum that 

. . . have met George Balabushka at The Pantry . . . 

...too much

Holy Smokes! I just have a Tad Kohara, but Tad told me it was the first one of it's kind he built with a Titlist blank

. . . or eight years ago.  Ultra smooth, perfect for a 14.1 player.  Tad Kohara passed away more than a few years ago, but I believe he transitioned from making custom cues to a higher level of production in his later years.  

Dear Dr No,

 

Thank you for the illustrative story about one watch and two of its owners who met but did not know it.

Such depth of connection and story is impossible to twitter on the ethernet in 150 keystrokes or less 

My cynicism is lifted a little bit by your story......

 

Regards,

MTF

 

. . . I would never have made the connection.  It took less than an hour from the moment I started reading his obit to finding the photo, all from the comfort of my home.

"synchronicity" as I don't believe in coincidence, you say a watch is an innate object! Objection! your honour, the watch is only innate if it has no "friend"... Art, of course we have not met...yet...but, I feel in this your writing that you are a humanist..nothing really to do with your Avatar! Don't know the story about your Avatar but it has, since I joined the Purist community, came across as a "authoritarian figure" a kind of "police supervisor"! Well, I am glad to know I was wrong.