PHILIPPE DUFOUR
Born in 1948 in the Vallée de Joux, Philippe Dufour served his apprenticeship at the technical school of Le Sentier and worked for established houses before setting up on his own in the valley where he was raised. He is regarded by his peers as the finest hand-finisher of his generation, and his output over an entire career amounts to only a few hundred watches.
Duality and Simplicity
The Grande et Petite Sonnerie of 1992 was the first wristwatch to strike in that manner. The Duality of 1996 was the first wristwatch with two escapements coupled by a differential to average their rates, a solution taken from school clocks and never before miniaturised. Simplicity, introduced in 2000, abandoned complication entirely to concentrate on proportion, finishing and the quality of a time-only movement.
The Standard of Finishing
Dufour’s insistence on the black-polished steel, the interior angle and the hand-drawn anglage of the nineteenth century has done more than produce his own watches. It set a benchmark that a generation of independents measured themselves against, and it is largely responsible for the return of hand finishing as a subject the collecting world takes seriously.