Girard-Perregaux SA () is a luxury
Swiss
Swiss may refer to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
*Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
*Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports
*Swiss Internation ...
watch
A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by ...
''manufacture'' with its origins dating back to 1791.
Since 2011, the Swiss holding group of Girard-Perregaux,
Sowind Group, has been a
subsidiary
A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...
of the French luxury group
Kering
Kering () is a French-based multinational corporation specializing in luxury goods. It owns the brands Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent.
The timber-trading company Pinault S.A. was founded in 1963, b ...
.
Headquartered in
La Chaux-de-Fonds
La Chaux-de-Fonds () is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura mountains at an altitude of 1000 m, a few kilometers south of the French border. After Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg, it is the fourth largest city loc ...
,
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, the company opened the Girard-Perregaux Museum near its headquarters in Villa Marguerite in 1999.
It is best known for the historic
Tourbillon
In horology, a tourbillon (; "whirlwind") is an addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement to increase accuracy. It was developed around 1795 and patented by the Swiss-French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet on June 26, 1801. In a tourbill ...
with three gold bridges, which was awarded a gold medal at the 1889
International Exposition
A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
soon after the launch of the watch.
Other notable models from the company include the collection 1966, Vintage 1945, and models such as Tri-Axial Tourbillon and Laureato, an icon inspired from the 70s.
History
Early history
![Constant Girard-Perregaux](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Constant_Girard-Perregaux.jpg)
In 1791, watchmaker and
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...
smith
Jean-François Bautte signed his first watches.
He created a manufacturing company in
Geneva
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...
, grouping for the first time ever all the watchmaking facets of that time. This included the engineering of the watch all the way to the final hand-assembly and hand-polishing of each piece.
In 1832, Jacques Bautte and Jean-Samuel Rossel succeeded Jean Bautte, becoming the head of the company.
In 1852, the watchmaker
Constant Girard Constant Girard (La Chaux-de-Fonds,1825 – La Chaux-de-Fonds, 1903) was a Swiss watchmaker from the 19th century, who marked his time by his developments in the escapement systems, in particular that of the tourbillon. His most famous watch, the T ...
founded ''Girard & Cie'' in
La Chaux-de-Fonds
La Chaux-de-Fonds () is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura mountains at an altitude of 1000 m, a few kilometers south of the French border. After Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg, it is the fourth largest city loc ...
, Switzerland. He then married Marie Perregaux in 1854, and the ''Girard-Perregaux Manufacture'' was founded in 1856.
In 1906, Constant Girard-Gallet, who took over control of the Manufacture from his father, acquired the Bautte House and merged it with ''Girard-Perregaux & Cie''.
[François Chaille, Girard-Perregaux]
Recent developments
Since the
quartz crisis
The quartz crisis was the upheaval in the watchmaking industry caused by the advent of quartz watches in the 1970s and early 1980s, that largely replaced mechanical watches around the world. , the brand has pursued its activities by reinforcing from the 1980s its position in the domain of high-quality mechanical watches. Since late 1980s, Girard-Perregaux has been a part of the Swiss
Sowind Group.
In 1999, the Villa Marguerite, a building in La Chaux-de-Fonds from the beginning of the 20th century, became the Girard-Perregaux Museum. A selection of old watches and documents illustrating the history of the brand was presented there. before its closure.
In 2011,
Sowind Group, the Swiss holding incorporating Girard-Perregaux, became a subsidiary of the French luxury group
Kering
Kering () is a French-based multinational corporation specializing in luxury goods. It owns the brands Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent.
The timber-trading company Pinault S.A. was founded in 1963, b ...
.
In 2012, Girard-Perregaux launched the Le Corbusier Watch Trilogy, paying a tribute to the famous architect. In 2021, Girard-Perregaux partnered with the luxury car manufacturer
Aston Martin
Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC is an English manufacturer of luxury sports cars and grand tourers. Its predecessor was founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford. Steered from 1947 by David Brown, it became associated with ...
.
Watch manufacturing
Girard-Perregaux relies on being a
manufacturer
Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a ran ...
of
movements
Movement may refer to:
Common uses
* Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece
* Motion, commonly referred to as movement
Arts, entertainment, and media
Literature
* "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...
and watches, and a manufacturer of cases and bands. They bring together some tens of different components: watchmakers, engineers, movement decorators, polishers, etc. This global approach, founded on the traditional know-how of the watchmaking craftsmanship, allows them to create and direct high quality watches and movements from the assembly stages all the way to the final encasement.
Girard-Perregaux designs, manufactures and develops its own movements:
* a large collection of high-end watch making movements, of which the
Tourbillon
In horology, a tourbillon (; "whirlwind") is an addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement to increase accuracy. It was developed around 1795 and patented by the Swiss-French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet on June 26, 1801. In a tourbill ...
with three gold bridges is the emblematic piece.
* a complete range of
mechanical movement
A mechanical watch is a watch that uses a clockwork mechanism to measure the passage of time, as opposed to quartz watches which function using the vibration modes of a piezoelectric quartz tuning fork, or radio watches, which are quartz watches ...
s at automatic reassembly (GP2700, GP3200, GP3300, GP4500), that can fit all the types of watches, all by serving as the base for the module constructions of mechanisms with complications.
*
Quartz movement
Quartz clocks and quartz watches are timepieces that use an electronic oscillator regulated by a quartz crystal to keep time. This crystal oscillator creates a signal with very precise frequency, so that quartz clocks and watches are at least a ...
s
Notable patents
The Manufacture has approximately 80 patents in the watchmaking domain and is the originator of many innovative concepts.
* 1965: Girard-Perregaux designed the first mechanical movement at high frequency, with the balance beating at 36,000 vibrations/hour: the Gyromatic HF.
* 1967: Girard-Perregaux receives the Centenary Award from the
Astronomical Observatory de Neuchatel in recognition of the accomplishments of the Manufacture generally, and specifically for the Observatory Chronometer wristwatch that used the Gyromatic HF movement.
* 1970: Girard-Perregaux presents its first wristwatch to the world to be equipped with a
quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical form ...
movement and the following year a second one which vibrates at 32,768 hertz, the frequency remaining the universal standard for quartz watches today.
* 2008: Girard-Perregaux presents prototypes of a constant-force escapement, distinguishing itself from all the other known escapements to this day. The first watch housing the constant escapement is presented in 2013.
* 2016: Girard-Perregaux re-launches its model Laureato, born in the 1970s, in the form of a limited edition of 225 timepieces. In 2017, the Laureato became a full collection.
Notable models
Tourbillon with three gold bridges
It is the emblematic model of Girard-Perregaux.
In 1884, Constant Girard submitted to the
United States Patent Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...
a patent of the design of the movement “
Tourbillon
In horology, a tourbillon (; "whirlwind") is an addition to the mechanics of a watch escapement to increase accuracy. It was developed around 1795 and patented by the Swiss-French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet on June 26, 1801. In a tourbill ...
with three gold bridges.” The three bridges were redesigned in the form of arrows and placed parallel to each other. The movement was no longer just a functional and technical element, but it also became an element of design in every way. In 1889, the Tourbillon with three gold bridges was awarded a gold medal at the
Universal Exposition of Paris.
In 1980, Girard-Perregaux decided to make 20 pieces to conform to the original of 1889: 1500 hours of work were necessary to create the first one. To celebrate its bicentenary in 1991, the company created a miniaturized wristwatch version of its famed Tourbillon with three gold Bridges. Since then, it is offered in different versions, and is sometimes associated with other watchmakers’
complications.
Vintage 1945
Vintage 1945 has a rectangular case and a design inspired by an
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style watch dating back to 1945.
The Vintage 1945 is powered by the Girard-Perregaux 9600-0019, mechanical self-winding movement, an all in-house movement.
Girard-Perregaux 1966
In 2012, Girard-Perregaux introduced a new Girard-Perregaux 1966 Full Calendar and a 1966 Chronograph, which has been highlighted as a new grand classic by Girard-Perregaux themselves. This Girard-Perregaux 1966 is a slightly larger faced model than previously issued by the watchmaker at 42 mm and may be a sign of the changing demands upon watchmakers by the watch enthusiast community.
Laureato
The Laureato was born in 1975. Its original design featured an integrated bracelet and an octagonal bezel. In the 1980s, the Laureato models mostly featured quartz movements.
In 1995, to celebrate the Laureato’s 20th anniversary, the Manufacture decided to relaunch the model, this time equipped with a calibre GP3100 automatic movement, with three hands and a date. In 2005, a sportier version of the Laureato, named the Evo3, designating the model’s third major evolution, was presented. In 2016, for the 225th Anniversary of the brand, the Laureato collection returned to centre stage thanks to a re-design of its lines, aimed to be as close as possible to its original features: octagonal bezel and fully-integrated bracelet were back. However, the movement fitted into the steel case was not a quartz, but a GP3300 movement.
Since 2017, new models combining different case materials, such as pink gold, titanium, steel and ceramic, along with blue, black or silver hobnail-pattern ("Clou de Paris") dial have joined the Laureato collection. The latest addition is a sapphire case model, presented in 2020, the Laureato Absolute Light.
Notable patrons and owners
![Trois Ponts](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Trois_Ponts.jpg)
*
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
, American film director & screenwriter
*
Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bean Bryant ( ; August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020) was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Widely r ...
, American basketball player
*
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brendan Brosnan (; born 16 May 1953) is an Irish actor and film producer. He is best known as the fifth actor to play secret agent James Bond in the Bond film series, starring in four films from 1995 to 2002 (''GoldenEye'', ''Tomorrow ...
, Irish-American actor
*
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor. Beginning in theatre and television, he landed his breakthrough role as James "Logan" Howlett / Wolverine in the 20th Century Fox ''X-Men'' film series (2000–2017), a role ...
, Australian actor
*
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (; ; born 28 January 1955) is a French politician who served as President of France from 2007 to 2012.
Born in Paris, he is of Hungarian, Greek Jewish, and French origin. Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Se ...
, 23rd
President of France
The president of France, officially the president of the French Republic (french: Président de la République française), is the executive head of state of France, and the commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces. As the presidency i ...
*
Farouk of Egypt
Farouk I (; ar, فاروق الأول ''Fārūq al-Awwal''; 11 February 1920 – 18 March 1965) was the tenth ruler of Egypt from the Muhammad Ali dynasty and the penultimate King of Egypt and the Sudan, succeeding his father, Fuad I, in 193 ...
, King of
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
*
Queen Victoria
Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...
, Queen of the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
See also
*
List of watch manufacturers
Watchmakers
This list is a duplicate of :Watchmakers, which will likely be more up-to-date and complete. Manufacturers that are named after the founder are sorted by surname. Names in this list require an article about the watch brand or watchma ...
*''
Manufacture d'horlogerie
(meaning "watchmaking manufacturer") is a French language term of horology that has also been adopted in the English language as a loanword. In horology, the term is usually encountered in its abbreviated form ''manufacture''. This term is used wh ...
''
References
External links
*
All the information about Girard PerregauxGirard Perregaux Watch News and ReviewsGirard-Perregaux Brand Profileby Michael Weare
Girard-Perregaux Watch news and Reviews at The Watch Review SiteWatch Ya Gonna Do About It Girard-Perregaux Reviews
{{Authority control
1791 establishments in Europe
Watch manufacturing companies of Switzerland
Swiss watch brands
Luxury brands
18th-century establishments in Switzerland
Companies based in the canton of Neuchâtel
Kering brands