Blancpain Villeret Ultra Slim Automatic

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Blancpain

Blancpain is a brand of Swiss mechanical watches. The company was founded as a small workshop in 1735 by the village watchmaker Jean-Jacques Blanpe in the village of Villeret. At that time, the watches were made in the artisanal way by peasants, who then attributed the finished watch parts to the watchmaker, and he, in turn, checked the quality of the parts and then collected the watches.

The company became a family business, and after a while Jean-Jacques's grandson, David-Louis Blanpa, founded a watch-making college for watchmakers, and also began successfully selling watches to France and Germany. Then the eldest son of David-Louis, Frederick Louis, transformed the workshop into a small factory, which allowed over the years to improve the produced watches and improve their quality.

Under the pressure of competition and the changing pricing policy for watch products, as well as the growing requirements for quality and accuracy of watches, by the end of the XIX century a 2-storey factory was built.

The last of the descendants of Jean-Jacques, Frederic-Emile, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, rebuilt the factory for the production of watches. Because of his unexpected death in 1932, the story of the family dynasty of watchmakers was interrupted. His only child, Bert-Nelli's daughter, was not interested in continuing the family business, and since June 1933 the company was managed by her father’s closest aide, Betty Fitcher and her companion Andre Leal. They reacted to the assigned task with full responsibility and continued to release watches, but already under the name “Rayville Ltd.” (an anagram to Villera).

Remaining true to the age-old traditions in the manufacture of watches, Rayville-Blancpain produced only a few thousand watches a year, unable to withstand the competition, forcing her to join the large SSIH corporation (Swiss Watch Industry Corporation Ltd.). In 1971, the new leadership of SSIH decided to radically change the strategy in the watch market in favor of quartz watches, which is why Blancpain, being a company that produces only mechanical watches, was put off and soon disappeared from the watch market.

While the entire watch industry in Switzerland directed its forces and rebuilt factories to produce quartz watches, gradually destroying not only the equipment, but also the cult of the mechanical watches themselves, Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet (the son of Frederick Piguet, the famous creator of complex Mechanisms), being confident that the traditional mechanical watches are still able to surprise and become an integral part of life, joined forces, and on January 9, 1983, they again revived the company Blancpain.

Having carefully studied the records of the company, Jean-Claude Biver discovered the fact that there has never been a quartz watch in Blancpain history, which was taken as a basis - the Blancpain quartz watch has never been and never will be in the future!

At that time, the production department of Blancpain was already owned by Omega, so it was decided to create a revived company in a new location, in the village of Le Brasse, located in the valley of Vallee de Joux. This area has long been famous for its craftsmen, and there were several well-known watch companies.

At the Frederic Piguet factory, located in the same valley, many old mechanical calibers were found, each of which was subjected to detailed research. Going back to the origins of watchmaking and carefully studying all aspects of production, Blancpain was able to revive the cult of mechanical watches.

In 1992, Jean-Claude Biver sold Blancpain to the concern SMH Group (which in 1998 was renamed the Swatch Group), but he himself remained as president of the company. In 2002, Beaver left the post of head of Blancpain, freeing up the place of Mark Hayek - the grandson of Nicholas Hayek.