The world of watchmaking has always been at the crossroads of technology and fashion. From the very beginning, the main feature of a watch were to be not only a small machine used to tell the time but to do so with style. So much so that the first timepieces were historically housed in a case decorated with precious metals. The main reason for this was that they were not very functional in terms of timekeeping, as they had daily deviations of even hours: they were a kind of technological jewel but not very practical or precise.
Hooke and Huygens’s invention of the hairspring in the 1670s changed the situation considerably. But this means that for about 170 years, clocks were a kind of mechanical toy of little use. Afterwards, horology became more codified and found its first great development in England. This is not to say that there were not some unique and, as we shall see, relevant discoveries in other parts of the world. One of them was the invention of skeletonization, something that has become today so fashionable for both informal and elegant watches.
“Skeletonizing” includes the removal of all non-essential metal from the bridges, main plate, gear train, or any other mechanical part of the watch, leaving only a minimalist “bare” skeletonized movement necessary for operation. The remaining thinned movement — the skeleton — is often decorated with engravings or surface finishing patterns. It may or may not have a dial that allows the movement to be seen.
The pioneer of skeletonization
Digging into the horology history archives, we discover that one of the pioneers of skeletonization was a watchmaker who is almost forgotten today but who had some fundamental merits: André-Charles Caron, who was well ahead of his time with the development of the first “skeleton” watches in the 1760s.
Caron’s creation was an improvement on the typical watchmaking style of the time. It paved the way for the revolution of a more famous figure: Lépine, the inventor of the caliber concept and, thus, the true father of modern watchmaking.
And here we discover something even more interesting connecting the two: Lépine moved to Paris in 1744, at the age of 24, and worked as an apprentice to Caron himself, then watchmaker to King Louis XV.
The two established a connection that became even stronger when Lépine married Caron’s daughter in 1756 and associated with him between 1756 and 1769 under the name “Caron et Lépine.”
Let us see above what a typical Caron watch looked like. We can see the filigree case set with precious stones and a miniature — a work of art that predates the modern industrialization of skeletonization by about 150 years.
The buyers of Caron’s watches were the nobles who frequented the French court, and the watches they wore were made for a particular purpose: to impress their peers. They, therefore, needed a magnificent object that suited this scope, and Caron’s pieces were perfect for that. In a sense, Caron did what Cartier did in the early 1900s: it made a style, like skeletonizing, fashionable.
As complex as these watches were, they were housed in outer cases to protect their delicate finishes and hung from intricate, jeweled chains attached to their belts, called chatelaines, as seen in several official portraits of noblemen and gentlewomen of the time.
However, the watches of the 1700s were unisex, with little difference between male and female models — it was only later, around 1800, that thanks to the influence of people like Lord Brummel, they started to simplify from the glitz typical of the 1700s. At that time, it was popular to add a minute repeater so that the watch would strike the hour and alert the wearer without the need to consult it visually.
Repeater watches were developed by Daniel Quare and Barlow in England in the early 1700s and soon became very popular. The most expensive clocks were equipped with a mechanism of small hammers that struck the case to mark the hours and quarters. Their popularity is attested by the rule that to join the Parisian guild of watchmakers, an apprentice had to make a chiming or repeating watch and present it for inspection — so, any master watchmaker in the city could do this. This is precisely what happened with the production of Caron, who was none other than the official watchmaker to the King of France.
The innovation of Lépine
Although the lever escapement had been invented around 1750, the most common system at the time was still the verge fusée, which guaranteed excellent running accuracy. The problem, however, was the sizable thickness of the mechanisms, which required the presence of two levels in the movement, one for the balance and one for the gears.
But this bulky and complicated two-level system was rendered almost invisible thanks to the cases designed by Caron, which enclosed the movement as if it were a precious magic box made of precious metals and decorated with all the artistic techniques available at the time.
It was Lépine, first Caron’s pupil and later his son-in-law and partner, who solved the problem of the thickness of movements by using the virgule escapement, a variant of the cylinder escapement, which had the advantage of allowing all the gears of a movement to be placed on a single plane, halving the thickness of watches and marking the end of the technical dominance of English watchmaking.
Although Lépine is not famous for his skill in decoration, far from it, he made possible and practical what came later, the skeletonization of movements. This further developed the concept of decoration, which had been applied to movement surfaces since the mid-19th century. In particular, in areas such as the Black Forest, a craft began to develop, which led to the upper bridges of movements being worked to take on images such as waves, landscapes, and human figures, which were revealed by the opening of the movement back, which in typical pocket watches of the time had two parts: a first closed back, which often snapped open, and a second inner back, called a cuvette, which served to protect the mechanism further.
The skeletonization and engraving of these surfaces made it possible to create true masterpieces of craftsmanship, often carried out on anonymous watches, which today do not allow us to trace the names of the true artists who inspired the creation of the first skeletonized watches in the late 19th/early 20th century, following the wave of industrial rationalism that would later give rise to the Bauhaus, and creating innovative pieces for the time, such as the Patek Philippe Calatrava.
Thus, beyond the claims of this or that Maison as the first to introduce skeletonization in their movements, this was a real trend that originated from a grassroots influence — but which had a distant and almost unknown father: this very André-Charles Caron, Horlogier du Roi de France in the 1700s.
