Looking back is not a routine exercise at Roger Dubuis. As a high-end watch manufacturer founded in 1995, Roger Dubuis the company generally prefers to focus on the here-and-now, or even the future, rather than dwelling on the past when creating timepieces.
But the watchmaker Roger Dubuis, whose name lights up the night on the front of his namesake company’s ultra-high tech Meyrin facilities near the Geneva airport, recalls much about his own historical influences. As the firm’s ‘soulmaker,’ Dubuis today trains Roger Dubuis watchmakers to use historic watchmaking techniques even as they develop cutting-edge designs.
Mr. Dubuis is a modest man whose watchmaking life began as a young boy when he was “amazed” by the intricacy of a local church clock and bell and soon thereafter became a watchmaking school student.
At that Swiss school the young Roger Dubuis made his first timepiece, a round-cased model (a shape he calls “truly Genevan”) with simple hours, minutes and seconds.
Decades later, after repairing and restoring watches at Patek Philippe for fourteen years and then repairing watches for his own restoration company, Dubuis founded the firm that today bears his name. Dubuis and three other employees, which included only one other watchmaker, officially started Roger Dubuis on May 19, 1995. That first student watch became the inspiration for Hommage, Roger Dubuis’ first collection.
This year Hommage is again front and center for Roger Dubuis as it launches several new Hommage models, including a special tribute to Roger Dubuis that echoes the very same layout as a 2003 Hommage launched by Roger Dubuis that features a tourbillon, large date and power reserve indicator.
This vintage-style timepiece, updated with a lacquer dial, is being offered in a limited edition of 208 – a reference to Roger Dubuis’ Geneva Watchmaking School student registration number. The number appears on the case and Mr. Dubuis’ signature can be found on the solid caseback.
Hommage collection
But there is much more to Hommage than this single, albeit special, limited-edition collection.
On this month’s cover we’ve pictured the Hommage Double Flying Tourbillon with Hand-made Guilloché, one of several Hommage models that highlight the Roger Dubuis 2014 debuts.
The cover piece is the collection’s premier model and features the dual-tourbillon configuration that is today Roger Dubuis’ most characteristic attribute (indeed, five of the company’s top ten best sellers feature a version of its double tourbillon movement). This new model also includes typical brand design cues such as long and slender lugs, a concave bezel, large Roman numerals, a fluted crown and a distinctive folding clasp. Inside is the RD100, a new movement composed of 452 individually hand-finished parts and endowed with a fifty-hour power reserve.
In addition to the 88-piece double tourbillon edition ($367,000) and the 208-piece Tribute to Roger Dubuis limited edition, the new Hommage collection also includes an automatic version and one featuring a column-wheel chronograph (with of the RD680 automatic movement with a Roger Dubuis signature micro-rotor). Additional models are in the works.
No dial
Possibly the single most visible characteristic seen in the new Hommage models is its bold guilloché dial. On the double tourbillon, however, the guilloché is unusual. What appears to be a brilliantly shimmering dial is not a dial at all. The ever-changing light that creates this glittering, almost three-dimensional effect plays off the deep grooves of a unique type of guilloché developed by Roger Dubuis.
Instead of traditional guilloché, where the artist makes parallel cuts into a gold dial, Roger Dubuis here cuts directly into the brass of the mainplate, creating a new type of deep-groove guilloche that multiplies the brilliance of the light reflecting from the front of the watch.
Imagined by Roger Dubuis head of movement development Gregory Bruttin and developed over time by the artisans at Stern Creation, the brand’s dial-making division, this deep groove guilloché is more demanding and more time consuming than traditional dial guilloché.
“We wanted to re-interpret traditional watchmaking with a modern approach, so we’ve used a very, very specific type of guilloché,” Bruttin explains. “For normal guilloché you first cut for the shape and then for the polished finish. For this new one we’ve developed, it takes four or five times (cuts) with the blade because it’s very deep.”
Handmade process
Among the added challenges, he explains, is the material.
“Normally for a dial you use gold without lead—but for this movement plate you have the lead (for hardening) with brass because it’s not possible without the lead, which hardens it and allows for clearer cutting.”
Traditional guilloché almost invariably involves crémage (literally ‘creaming’) with wet talcum powder to create a ‘ground-down’ finish that often hides small imperfections. For the Hommage Double Tourbillon, this step is ignored in part because mistakes cannot be hidden, and the grooves themselves are already finished with their final cut, which essentially polishes them.
Another tricky procedure that makes Hommage a difficult model to create involves aligning the two bridges that comprise the ersatz dial.
“It’s a handmade process, “ Bruttin ads. “In order to sync the guilloché on the plate and the small bridge they have to be done at the same time. It can’t be done first and then cut.”
Yet another challenge with this Hommage model is placing the Roman numerals directly onto the plate. Typically, he explains, the dial makers need to scratch the back of the dial where the numeral will go to indicate placement. But to meet the strict demands of the Geneva Seal required for all timepieces at Roger Dubuis, such scratching is not possible. Instead, the numerals are made with special claws that attach to the plate.
“This is not a normal decoration,” he explains. “And this is also a new type of decoration for the Geneva Seal people.” Indeed, the guardians of the Geneva Seal needed to work with Roger Dubuis to adapt the guidelines to reference this new guilloche.
It might at first seem counterintuitive for Roger Dubuis, a company known for its contemporary watch designs, to focus so much attention on a traditional dial-making technique. But the melding of traditional and futuristic techniques is familiar at Roger Dubuis.
“Roger Dubuis is a brand with a lot of contrasts,” explains Lionel Favre, associate director of product design. “Contrasts between the design and the contemporary movement and (traditional) Geneva Seal, and within many of our collections, you’ll see contrasts. It’s a lot like a skeleton watch. Yes, it’s a tradition, but when Roger Dubuis works on a skeleton we try to make it contemporary with traditional craftsmanship, and this Hommage has the same approach.”
In addition to its appearance on the double tourbillon noted above, the new plate-cut guilloche technique could be added to future Hommage designs. The new Hommage Chronograph and the new Automatic model echo the collection’s rich sunray décor, though its brilliance actually emanates from a gold dial rather than from the movement plate as with the double tourbillon.
Also set to debut at SIHH 2014 (where a wholly new Roger Dubuis booth will showcase a ‘dreamlike mechanical world’) is a titanium black DLC version of the groundbreaking Excalibur Quatuor, as well as a Velvet Haute Joaillerie creation. In an upcoming issue International Watch will take a closer look at these and other Roger Dubuis debuts.