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J. TH. WINNERL – Tremblage

As the maker of chronometers to the French Navy, head of timekeeping at theObservatory of Paris and a prolific horological inventor, J. Th. Winnerl was not a fashion-conscious watchmaker like most of his contemporaries. He had little interest in adding overly decorative visual details to his pocketwatches, and his ship’s chronometers were serious navigational instruments. All of his timekeeping creations were specifically designed and developed as timekeeping tools of a serious nature, with accuracy, clean lines, and high legibility being the keywords of their production. The revival of J. Th. Winnerl’s work in the 21st century by Bernhard Zwinz sets out to respect and build upon these foundations laid out more than 170 years ago.

Nonetheless, Bernhard Zwinz felt that there were possibilities for adding tasteful and subdued elegance to the Winnerl dials for his clients in a manner that might have even been viewed approvingly by J. Th. Winnerl himself.

TIMEPIECE

Respecting this traditional approach, Winnerl presented a new version with a special dial finished in a technique known as tremblage in 2020 . Derived from the French word ‘trembler’, meaning ‘to shake’, it is a form of textured engraving where a small burin is lightly hammered with a regular sucession of quick light taps, as if trembling over the surface of the dial’s surface. This creates randomly placed, small indentations and micro incisions into the dial surface. Although this is executed by hand and therefore the placement of each hit of the burin is seemingly arbitrary, it is up to the watchmaker to ensure that the entire surface is equally and regularly treated by the tremblage technique. If not executed uniformly, for instance if the watchmaker moves the burin across the dial either too quickly or too slowly during the hammering process, the light will reflect differently off the dial’s surface in various areas, making the finish appear uneven.

For this reason, the creation of a tremblage dial requires the unbroken concentration for extended periods or else there is risk that the dial could be ruined. Even the tempo and timing of the work has an effect: if the craftsman starts and stops too often during the tremblage process, this changeover in impacts to the surface will also have an effect on the dial’s surface regularity and finish. It is for these reasons that each dial created in this manner is absolutely unique as well as being the culmination of a highly refined hand finishing technique that is a sign of ultimate craftsmanship. This decorative element of tremblage blends harmoniously with the exquisite beauty of the extraordinarily delicate, hair thin execution of the hour, minute and seconds hands. The finesse of execution at this level is unlike anything available in today’s watchmaking, a virtuoso expression of handwork, an almost lost artform impossible to execute with machines.