How do you preserve a centuries old craft? You teach it to a group of young, enthusiastic students, who espouse and hold dear the history and legacy behind the craft. The future is in safe hands if these very students aspire to preserve the craft themselves, for posterity. This statement is none more truer than the tradition of watchmaking in a small town nestled in the Swiss Alps; Le Locle. A school in the town teaches the craft and students are discovering the intricacies and wonders of mechanical watchmaking.
A custodian of such a complex and intricate craft is a gentleman, who is also a teacher at the technical college in Le Locle, Yves Antoniotti. "Some of the technology has evolved, but the basic techniques remain unchanged." Techniques like hand-polishing screwheads until they gleam like mirrors, or grinding axle-ends down to a 10th of a millimetre using miniature lathes.
A four year course at the Le Locle technical college is grueling and arduous. As much as it is a test of one's patience (a cardinal virtue of a watchmaker), the process is also a test of a student's willpower, resilience and composure. In 1999 the class started with 17 students. Seven were left by 2001. The school year being a culmination of hand-tooling and assembling 92 miniscule components that make up a Zenith Marine Chronometer - a complex and intricate piece of micro-engineering. The paradox in this process is that the hand-tooling and assembling are considered obsolete, yet it is this very obsolescence that produces watches that fetch premium prices. In the words of Antoniotti, "The boom today is in complicated mechanical watches for the luxury market."
The history and preservation of watchmaking in Le Locle can be attributed to Daniel Jeanrichard. In the early 1700s Jeanrichard opened the region's first watchmaking workshop, sharing his skills with his seven children and a handful apprentices. Jeanrichard is legendary because he was a self-taught watchmaker who invented the first specialised watchmaking machinery.