Louis Erard Excellence Guilloché Main II
The Louis Erard Excellence Guilloché Main II upholds the brand’s reputation for making stylish watches that represent incredible value for money. In this instance, the Swiss watch firm has produced a watch endued with a hand-guilloché dial, made using traditional know-how but blessed with a contemporary appearance.
When I was a little boy, about four years of age, my mother would take me to Mr Frainey’s, the local newsagent. There, alongside the sweets and newspapers, sat an array of Corgi and Matchbox cars in a display cabinet. To a little person, these were 7.5cm of luxurious loveliness, a just reward for seven days of good behaviour. Invariably, after vacillating between two cars for an inordinate amount of time, my mother would lean over and say, “Just one car, mind.” And there it was, four words that prepared me for adult life.
We are conditioned from a young age that money, or lack thereof, precludes frivolous consumption. With maturity comes an awareness of the finer things in life, but also a realisation that some items will remain out of reach.
Louis Erard, the Swiss watch brand based in the Jura mountains, has clearly identified the frustration many individuals feel when they recognise excellence, yet lack the pecuniary means to make an acquisition. The company from Le Noirmont has cleverly democratised luxury using various means. Firstly, it freely admits that it works on smaller margins than most of its competitors. Secondly, where possible, it uses the same cases, hands, crowns or movements for different models, thereby delivering economies of scale. And finally, the company makes limited numbers of products, ensuring demand always outstrips supply. This latter scenario avoids the brand and its retailers holding vast inventories of products for prolonged periods.
Despite the aforementioned reasons for the brand’s keen pricing, it inevitably leads some industry commentators to question how the company can deliver so much for so little. Well, it’s not because its models lack style. On the contrary, Louis Erard has produced some stunning watches, often in collaboration with third parties. For example, it has worked with legendary watchmaker, Alain Silberstein on several occasions. Moreover, it has collaborated with watchmaking genius, Vianney Halter and design specialists, atelier oï. Quite simply, Louis Erard has repeatedly shown that accessible pricing and design expertise are not mutually exclusive.
Then there is the matter of hitherto expensive artistic crafts. Grand feu dials, stone dials, including aventurine, lapis-lazuli and malachite, and hand-guilloché are all usually accompanied with five-figure pricing. Louis Erard has brought these esoteric details within the financial grasp of a far larger audience.
Manuel Emch, watch industry consultant, shareholder and delegate board member at Louis Erard has shared his vast expertise with the Swiss brand. Having worked for some of the best names in the industry, he has a well-developed eye for design, knows where to procure parts and has formed relationships with suitable partners.
Last year, Louis Erard produced an ‘affordable’ watch endowed with a hand-guilloché dial. Now, the Swiss firm has just unveiled a sequel, the Louis Erard Excellence Guilloché Main II.
The dial on this latest creation is made using a rose-engine lathe. These machines, often 100 years old, are devoid of electrical power. Usually, a brass disc is affixed to a rotating head and held in a vertical position. By pressing a chisel against the brass plate and turning the rotating head using a wheel, the chisel imparts a groove to the brass plate. The rose-engine lathe is equipped with an array of rosettes or cams which determine the trajectory of the chisel, thereby creating the desired pattern.
Hand-guilloché is not a trade taught in school or college, instead knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next. Firstly, when turning the handle to control the rotating head, the artisan must ensure it is turned at a constant speed. Secondly, the hand-pressure applied to the chisel must be uniform. It may sound simple but in reality, mastering the art of hand-guilloché takes many years to perfect.
Louis Erard has sought the expertise of Fehr & Cie SA, a specialist firm based in La Chaux-de-Fonds to produce the guilloché dial of this latest watch. Ordinarily, most guilloché dials are adorned with traditional patterns such as Clous de Paris or Grain d’Orge. However, the Louis Erard Excellence Guilloché Main II features a contemporary dial comprised of crisp lines and concentric circles. This eye-catching composition necessitated the creation of a bespoke cam in order to produce the glorious dial decoration.
There will only be 99 examples of the Louis Erard Excellence Guilloché Main II produced and with a very affordable price of CHF 3,900, dithering types will undoubtedly miss out.
The brand’s press release
It’s so Louis Erard, the logo isn’t even printed on the dial. It’s all in the pattern: a large diamond, opened out like perspective, black flat spaces and lines engraved in the metal. A work of art made manifest: clear proof that traditional métiers d’art have a promising future.
This is the second time Louis Erard has reinterpreted the art of guilloché (the first Excellence Guilloché Main was released in 2021). An art where the craftsman’s hand meets the mechanism: a manual lathe with cams determines the designs, while the hand guides the chisel — a mark of exceptional watchmaking whose origins date back to the 16th century.
Guilloché is the art of decoration and repetitive patterns. Traditionally, guilloché is used to create variation, as in music: the theme or motif creates the starting point, then the rhythm or associations are woven in. Traditionally, guilloché is based on a repertoire of patterns: there are nearly 80, and these patterns constitute the scale on which everything else is composed.
But Louis Erard changed the rules under the artistic and strategic impulse of Manuel Emch. He wanted this second opus of Excellence Guilloché Main to be a 100% original creation, starting from the design, and utilising all the resources of artisan dial-maker Fehr in La Chaux-de-Fonds to enhance and modernise traditional guilloché.
Guilloché is no longer a question of decoration; it’s a subject in and of itself: a large diamond, an ace of diamonds, with a kinetic feel. It’s no longer a question of revisiting an old aesthetic, but of putting the technique at the service of a contemporary composition. And artistic references are not far: an air of op art and Neo-Geo plastic; space between lines and flat sections, in the style of Frank Stella; a playful Victor Vasarely pop art touch.
The dial is also a display of strength, since its creation relies on an unprecedented approach. In the end, everything about this piece is innovative. The operating range (the sequence of operations necessary for production) had to be assembled from scratch, from the first black varnishing to the final rhodium plating after the guilloché.
The guilloché itself required all the dexterity of the guillocheuse: the same artisan who made the 2021 dial, she produces the 99 dials piece by piece, each one taking several hours of work on the manual guilloché rose engine lathe. Not to mention the engineers, who had to invent and manufacture new cams (large metal stencils that the lathe translates into a design and scales down to the scale of the dial) to achieve this unprecedented result.
Limited series of 99 pieces. “Swiss Guilloché Main” dial, signature fir tree hands in blued steel. Polished steel case and open caseback, 42 millimetres, water resistant to 50 metres. Strap: black grained calf leather with tone-on-tone stitching, blue grained calf leather lining in Louis Erard blue. Sellita SW261-1 automatic movement with hour and minute function.
An exceptional piece, with top-of-the-range execution and always at an exceptional price: CHF 3,900 The art and style of Louis Erard taking up the challenge of fine watchmaking. More métiers d’art will follow.
Further reading