Timepieces Trade Market

Lip : History

The founder of the firm was a Frenchman born in Alsace, and he was called Emmanuel Lipmann.
The very German-sounding name was certainly not suitable as a signature on watches destined for the French-speaking market. Lipmann therefore made short work of it, pruning his family name to its first three letters and baptizing his products simply Lip.
When ail this took place cannot be determined exactly today, but it is known that by 1867, Lipmann, a watchmaker's son, had set up a watch business in Besançon, the center of France's watchmaking industry.
In 1890, his company was already employing 35 people, 15 of whom worked at home.
His sons, Camille and Ernest, took over the helm with the new century in 1900. Under their management, Lip developed into a true manufacturer, producing its own movements for pocket and wristwatches.
To withstand the powerful Swiss competition, Ernest Lipmann concentrated on precision watchmaking - endorsed by the national observatory in Besançon in 1936, when a Lipmann chronometer set a new timekeeping record.
The pursuit of watchmaking's higher goals also led to a tourbillon wristwatch with form movement which appeared in around 1948.
It was then that the management passed to Fred Llp, a qualified watchmaker from Besançon's Watchmaking College.
This grandson of the founder employed around 650 people al the start of the fifties.
They produced some 1000 watches a day in "one of the finest workshops in the world."
Among them were such collectors' pieces as the high-quality Lip calibers T18 (tonneau) and R25 (round) for men's wristwatches, the T15 for women's watches and the pocket-watch caliber R40.
Lip was probably the first European watch brand to use the unbreakable "Elgiloy" mainspring.
In 1950 and 1951 the French Tibet expedition entrusted their timekeeping to the robust "Himalaya" model.
In 1973, Lip suffered a serious financial crisis, resulting in the company and the name changing hands several times.