n the theme of “generations”, which is highlighted in our latest issue, there is a founding family in horology: the Jaquet-Droz, father and son, during the Age of Enlightenment. Watchmaking was still in its infancy when Pierre Jaquet-Droz was born on 28th July 1721, on a small farm in La Chaux-de-Fonds. His father, like many of the peasants in the region, made use of the off-season and spent the long winter months making clock parts.

Pierre Jaquet-Droz was immersed in this environment, but the young man initially intended to pursue a career in the church. Coming from a Protestant family, he left for the University of Basel and there, as if by happy coincidence, attended the lectures of the brilliant physicist and mathematician Daniel Bernoulli, son of Jean Bernoulli, who was one of the first to apply infinitesimal calculus in mathematics, with his brother Jacques (another story of generations!). The Enlightenment scholar with eclectic interests (including automata), certainly as brilliant as he was a pedagogue, awakened the young man to the sciences of his time.

Pierre (1721-1790) and Henri-Louis (1752-1791) Jaquet-Droz

Approaching mechanical arts with the same passion an adolescent might show for a game, Pierre Jaquet-Droz then returned to his clockmaking roots and the mechanical challenges posed by this rapidly developing activity. With the benefit of the mathematics and physical sciences he had learned, he distinguished himself from his peers through his determination to find technical solutions, whether in terms of aesthetics or purely mechanical.

An encounter would change the course of his life and prove decisive to his international career: that with George Keith, called Milord Maréchal, governor of the Principality of Neuchâtel, who advised him to make his work known abroad, particularly in Spain, where he could help him gain access to the court. After waiting several months, Pierre Jaquet-Droz presented his work to King Ferdinand VI of Spain and was met with great acclaim. The monarch and the entire court were left speechless at the sight of a clock that could strike on request without needing manual intervention. The watchmaker sold all the mechanical wonders he had brought with him for the very good sum of 2,000 gold pistoles. And that was the start of it all.

A trio spanning two generations

Returning to La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1759, now recognised by the courts and princes of Europe and beyond, Pierre Jaquet-Droz was able to devote himself entirely to the manufacture of his watches, clocks and automata, thanks to the large sum of money brought back from Spain. This extraordinary family, characteristic of the social progress of the intellectual elites in the second half of the eighteenth century, would shine even more brightly with the arrival of Henri-Louis, the son of Pierre Jaquet-Droz, and Jean-Frédéric Leschot, whom the watchmaker considered his adopted son and took in following the death of his mother.

An archive on the work of Jaquet-Droz, father and son, published in Europa Star in 1979. ©Europa Star

From 1773 onwards, Jaquet-Droz and Leschot perfected and marketed increasingly sophisticated automata. Their work culminated with the three humanoid automata: The Writer, The Draughtsman and The Musician, presented in La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1774. These three masterpieces were admired by connoisseurs from all over the world.

From the very beginning, Pierre Jaquet-Droz had a particular passion for nature and birds, which he reproduced in his clocks, snuffboxes, pocket watches and automata. Following their arrival in London in 1774, and through the intermediary of James Cox, the Jaquet-Droz family won over and fascinated the Qianlong Emperor himself, as well as the Mandarins at the Imperial Court, exporting more than 600 pieces in ten years.

Hall clock attributed to Pierre Jaquet-Droz. ©Musée d’horlogerie du Locle - Château des Monts

However, the situation soon took a turn for the worse for the successors of this multinational watchmaking company, as Europe entered a new era with the French Revolution and then the Napoleonic Wars, closing its main markets. Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz passed away, exhausted by their incessant activity, at this moment of historical upheaval, between 1790 and 1791. An era came to an end, for the Jaquet-Droz family as well as for watchmaking as a whole.

The contemporary face of Jaquet Droz

The French Revolution turned the world upside down, followed by industrialisation, globalisation, new technologies... But symbolically, the bird cherished by Jaquet-Droz father and son took flight again in 2013 when, almost three centuries after its birth, the brand that bears their name presented the Charming Bird project, the first singing bird automaton on a wristwatch ever made.

After years of research into mechanisms to achieve a true technical feat, Jaquet Droz combined the singing bird, the automaton that established its reputation in the eighteenth century, with fine watchmaking. Two years later, in 2015, this watch won the ‘Mechanical Exception’ Prize at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève.

Despite the difficulty of machining titanium, Jaquet Droz has managed to preserve the distinctive geometry of its case. It has two unique features. First, a double sapphire crystal, which protects the movement on the dial side and, separately, protects the bird automaton at 6 o’clock. Second, the narrow lateral opening, between 8 and 10 o’clock, which allows the air – and therefore the melody – to circulate from inside the case to the outside world. All with a satin-brushed finish executed to perfection.

Since 1738, clockwork mechanisms have undergone not one, but many disruptions. One of the most important was miniaturisation. This enabled the workshop, still based in its La Chaux-de-Fonds stronghold, to move on from the music box and life-sized automata to the wristwatch. The other revolution was in materials. Jaquet Droz has embraced this in all its dimensions: sapphire, silicon and plasma ceramic are the most recent examples. However, titanium was still missing. No longer. A decade after its GPHG win, the Charming Bird has been reinterpreted in a Grade 5 titanium case. It is the world’s first wristwatch with musical automaton to be made from this metal: a contemporary material that is notoriously difficult to work with. By adopting this material, the Charming Bird Titanium is 20% lighter, weighing 42 grams less on the wrist.

We could mention many other contemporary creations directly inspired by the work of Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz. A magnificent example is the Pocket Watch Automaton - Parrot Repeater: many craftsmen worked for almost a year to bring to life this unique and exceptional piece, which represents the peak of Jaquet Droz’s expertise.

Pocket Watch Automaton - Parrot Repeater

Housed in a 56mm red gold case, the movement features a minute repeater coupled with an automaton boasting eight animations, activated in concert by a single bolt mechanism at 9 o’clock. The scene comes to life as the waterfall in the background flows, the two parent parrots move, their egg hatches and their chicks shuffle. The scene, created entirely by hand by the artisans at Jaquet Droz, called for the very highest levels of craftsmanship: enamelling, engraving and micro-painting. The case has been entirely hand-set and hand-painted, both on the dial side and the back, and features a secret mechanism (for which two patents were filed) in an opening hidden within the bow. The watch has 1,240 hand-set jewels, including 486 emeralds, 727 sapphires and 16 rubies.

Indeed, Jaquet Droz is renowned not only for its mastery of automata, but also for the artistic crafts with which it adorns them.

This mastery is particularly visible in the Ophidian Hour. For the year of the snake, Jaquet Droz has unveiled its first watches without hands, as two unique interpretations, one with a mother-of-pearl dial and one on a Sonora Sunrise mineral dial. Both are 41mm in diameter and made from red gold. The hours are indicated by the head of the snake and the minutes by its tail on trailing discs.

Ophidian Hour - Sonora Sunrise

However, this is not where the real achievement lies. The suppleness of a snake’s body offers a creative simplicity that belies the difficulty of this form, which is entirely created from smooth curves. It offers so many surfaces that it was almost impossible to add enamel, since pre-fired enamel is a powder that, in theory, cannot be applied nor adhere to the entire circular surface of the animal at the same time. Not only did Jaquet Droz craftsmen manage this, they went further still. In addition to enamel, which follows the slightest undulation in the snake’s body, they have created perfectly graduated colouring, extending from light to dark green, alternating, on one iteration, with an intense blood red.

Like automata, artistic crafts have this unique ability: that of giving life.