If you ever wanted that vintage piece and couldn’t find it, then Jaeger-LeCoultre may have the answer for you. “The Collectibles” program has been designed to assist collectors in obtaining that much sought-after vintage piece, fully restored and running like the day it was new.
Coinciding and celebrating 190 years of the Manufacture, Jaeger-LeCoultre has introduced a program to allow collectors the ability to acquire some much sought-after and rare timepieces. This will be an ongoing program and, over time, allow for more vintage and neo-vintage pieces to add. These will all be fully restored and vetted by the expert team at Jaeger-LeCoultre to ensure both quality and prominence.
Catherine Rénier, CEO – Jaeger-LeCoultre
“With Jaeger-LeCoultre’s most emblematic timepieces being increasingly sought-after by collectors, we are delighted to introduce The Collectibles. Together with a new master reference book for our Maison’s most emblematic models of the 20th century, this new programme presents a unique opportunity to acquire a piece of the Manufacture’s history.”
The Collectibles will slowly build over time, with an ever-evolving selection of curated pieces available through jaeger-lecoultre.com as well as capsule collections that will be available and will also travel around the world. Among the first to be offered are fine examples of a Geophysics, a Memovox Parking, a Master Mariner Deep Sea and a Shark Deep Sea.
In addition to the watch, every Collectibles timepiece is presented with an extract from the Jaeger-LeCoultre archives, a new watch strap and a complimentary copy of The Collectibles coffee-table book. And when available, the original box and papers and the original strap or bracelet will be included. To make sure that every piece is authentic and in perfect working order, each piece offered through The Collectibles is thoroughly vetted by Jaeger-LeCoultre’s historical experts and fully serviced and restored by the specialised watchmakers of the Manufacture’s restoration workshop.
Jaeger-LeCoultre isn’t known as the Watchmaker’s Watchmaker for nothing. For every piece offered, JLC has its current ten experts on their restoration team meticulously go through the Manufacture’s archives and find the blueprint of every piece ever made, and in some cases, also find a stock of original spare components. If there is no component to hand, there is a stock of some 6,000 swages or stamps that they can use to make an identical component from scratch. This is something that totally unique, and very few manufacturers would even dream of doing this to keep the original authenticity of the watch and movement itself.
Because the Manufacture is fully integrated, the entire process can be carried out in-house. While the mechanical restoration may, in some cases, be significant, the intervention on the case and dial must be kept to a minimum since too much work would alter the historical nature of the piece for collectors; therefore, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Heritage team seeks watches that are as close as possible to their original condition.
“Being able to restore these remarkable timepieces and offer them once again is a nice tribute to our current environment, in which sustainability and second lives have come to the fore… It is fantastic to see 50- or 80-year-old pieces given a new life. For me, that symbolises the beauty of our world – of timeless and durable objects to be passed from one generation to the next.”
Catherine Rénier, CEO – Jaeger-LeCoultre
As each piece is offered with a coffee-table book, it’s only fitting that it covers the period from 1925 to 1974, surveying 17 of the most significant models produced by the Manufacture during this ‘golden age’ of 20th-century watchmaking. The book is a marvellous roll call of some of the ground-breaking innovations Jeager-LeCoultre has developed over those years, including timepieces such as the Reverso, Memovox, Futurematic and Geophysic. A full chapter is devoted to each of the 17 models, providing an encyclopaedic history and including essential data for collectors supplemented by detailed and informative photography and copies of historical documents from the Manufacture’s archives.
Whilst collectors have always been able to obtain and source information on these models from various places, this is the first time that such detailed information has been housed in one place, and all written by the experts from JLC itself. For collectors, this is truly a priceless addition to the watch itself, and one that I feel will sit pride of place in many collector’s loungerooms across the world.
Given Jaeger-LeCoultre’s undisputable contribution to watchmaking, The Collectibles book also provides watch history buffs a much broader understanding of modern watchmaking and how the mechanical watch has evolved over the past 50 years. To paint the picture for readers, The Collectibles book is peppered with cultural and contextual stories of how these watches were born, just how modern watchmaking has responded to change over the 20th Century and what impact this has had on The Manufacture.
Some of these great stories include the increasing freedom of women in the 1920s and how wrist-worn watches, along with radically new styles of dress, helped to showcase their liberation and freedom; in the 1930s, the Reverso – with its distinctive style, coloured dials and unisex appeal – epitomised the lifestyle of the newly fashionable ‘sporting gentleman’; as the 1950s brought an emphasis on technology and the emergence of the international businessman, Jaeger-LeCoultre responded with automatic movements and numerous useful functions – as seen in the Futurematic, Memovox and Geophysic.
Paradoxically, Jaeger-LeCoultre is looking to the future by looking into its past, something that perhaps we watch enthusiasts take for granted, as the past inevitably provides guidance to the future. This can be seen in many examples these days, with many brands offering ‘re-editions’ of vintage watches with new materials and updated mechanisms, or they are looking at vintage models and reimagining them for today’s collector. JLC has decided on a different approach to this, going back into its history and offering collectors a real piece of it – which is a great idea in my opinion. And with each timepiece being thoroughly vetted by Jaeger-LeCoultre’s experts and fully serviced and restored by the Manufacture’s in-house restoration workshop, it’s giving a second life to decades-old pieces, enabling these timeless and durable objects to be passed from one generation to the next!
