DonCorson
[AHCI]
3358
Daddy, where do the Harry Winston Opus 9s come from?....
A visit to Agenhor, Geneva
Don Corson, January 2010
As we arrive at Agenhor's new building in Meyrin, Geneva is showing us a rather unusual side of it's weather spectrum, snow.
This new shop is built according to the latest energy conservation principals, good insulation and a large amount of passive energy storage in the structure.
Inside out of the cold we are greeted by the boss, Mr. Jean-Marc Wiederrecht who explained to us his shop and the watch he had on his wrist, a Van Cleef & Arpels "Midnight in Paris" over a cup of coffee.
The dial is aventurine with the night sky of Paris always correctly visible as the year goes by.
As Jean-Marc explains to us, a typical feature of his watches is that the complication module is often not on the dial side, but at the back of the watch as we can see here.
The second crown on the back allows setting the sky. Note the casing ring made of meteorite.
From here we move on to visit the ateliers. Here is the parts receiving and control. The production model used by Agenhor is to do the product development themselves, as well as the watch assembly. But all the part production is done by specialised suppliers in the Geneva area.
Here we come to the atelier assembling the Opus 9. We see a finished watch-head resplendent in its red protective tape.
Here we see the Opus 9 movement. An Agenhor module mounted on a base movement from Piguet.
The seemingly complicated translation of the rotating movement of a standard movement to the linear movement of the jewel chains is done by a beguilingly simple mechanism. The two large wheels on the movement below drive the chain links directly. The links having gear teeth on one side.
Here are some links fitted with the red garnets where you can see the drive teeth on the side. Jean-Marc told us that the limiting factor in the production of the Opus 9 is the diamond production. The jewels are all cut specially to fit in the links and must be cut to watchmaking precision. They send more than 50% of the diamonds they receive back to Harry Winston as out of tolerance and unusable. The links are not made of any special high-tech material, but a material that can be easily fabricated to tight tolerances, maillchort (german silver). An entire chain with 72 links and the corresponding jewels weighs less than 1 gram.
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For the rest of Don's report in HoMe forum, please CLICK HERE
Daddy, where do the Harry Winston Opus 9s come from?....
A visit to Agenhor, Geneva Don Corson, January 2010 As we arrive at Agenhor's new building in Meyrin, Geneva is showing us a rather unusual side of it's weather spectrum, snow. This new shop is built according to the latest energy conservation principals,...
