Timepieces Trade Market

Blancpain : History

The calendar showed the year 1735 when Jehan-Jacques Blancpain turned to the craft of watchmaking in his farm-house in the village of Villeret on the banks of the river Suze.
To start with, he made watch components and later complete pocket-watches as well.
In the following centuries the destiny of the rapidly prospering company was in the hands of one Blancpain after another.
In 1926 the first Harwood-type automatic wristwatches were completed for the French market.
Blancpain entered the annals of automatic wristwatches in 1931 with their famous rectangular "Rolls".
The long reign of the founding family came to an end in 1932 with the death of Frédéric-Emile Blancpain.
Because of the lack of family successors, the business was run for the next half century under the name Rayville - a phonetic inversion of Villeret.
Among the products of that time were very robust divers' watches.
The "Fifty Fathoms" model, launched in 1953, which was water-resistant to 200 metres, accompanied Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his team when they shot the award-winning documentary film, The Silent World.
In 1970, Rayville S.A. was taken over by the Swiss watch group SSIH.
Thereafter the long-established watch name fell increasingly into disuse.
In 1982, an Omega employee, Jean-Claude Bier, and the movement manufacturer, Jacques Piguet, bought the Blancpain name from the financially hit SSIH. From 1983, its moon-phase models made a major contribution to the renaissance of mechanical wristwatches.
Other mechanical specialities followed.
Soon a new wristwatch with a minute-repeater made its debut.
With a diameter of 20,3 mm and a height of 3,2 mm its movement ranks among the smallest of its type.
In 1989 Blancpain realized a calibre that had never before been seen in the history of watchmaking - an automatic chronograph with split-seconds and date.
The top watch of the Blancpain collection is undoubtedly the reference 1735, limited to 30 pieces.
Fit-ted with perpetual calendar, split-seconds chronograph, tourbillon and minute-repeater, it is one of the most complicated wristwatches made.
In 1992 Blancpain once again changed hands when it was taken over by SMH (Société Suisse de Microélectronique et d'Horlogerie), now called the Swatch Croup.
Mechanical watches continue to be its trump card.
Despite its membership of the Swatch Croup, you will look in vain for a future Blancpain with a quartz movement.