At the time, the introduction of the battery-powered quartz watch in the 1970s was widely believed to have sounded the death knell for the Swiss watch industry. But the mechanical watch, through a miracle of selective evolution, defied its doom and made one of the most astounding comebacks in the history of the industry. It reinvented itself as less of a necessity, and more of an art form and personal expression, which led to the resurgence of mechanically complex and exotic watches. Whereas much has been said about the labours of those who have sustained the craft and commercial viability of the mechanical watch, the contributions of independent sub-contractors responsible for some of the most seminal timepieces in the post-quartz era are often passed over.
Back then, Swiss watchmaking was still very much a cottage industry in which a great deal of complications was developed by external specialists. Chief amongst them was Renaud & Papi, a fecund independent atelier that was behind many of the most decade-defining movements of the 1990s and 2000s. Its workshops also became a veritable breeding ground for some of the most brilliant horological minds, who have in turn gone on to stake their place among watchmaking’s foremost vanguard, spearheading what many consider to be the second golden age of the mechanical watch.
FROM START-UP TO POWERHOUSE
Renaud & Papi was founded in 1986 by Dominique Renaud and Giulio Papi. Both men were former watchmakers at Audemars Piguet who shared a passion for grand complications and skeletonised watches. Instead of yielding to tradition, which dictated that they had to spend 20 years pushing jewels and polishing before they could get to work on their first complication, they decided to speed up time by leaving the brand and starting Renaud & Papi in Le Locle, primarily designing complications, with minute repeaters being their specialty.
In the years that followed, their atelier grew to become a technical powerhouse that played an instrumental role in the grand complications race crucial to the revival of the mechanical watch. For instance, Renaud & Papi was one of the first to adopt 3D computer-aided design technology, which opened up a new world of mechanical micro-miniaturisation.
Its first watch was the landmark IWC Grande Complication ref. 3770, the harbinger of so much that was to come. Günter Blümlein, the visionary who at the time was reviving the fortunes of IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre, tasked the young duo to create a minute repeater mechanism for Kurt Klaus’ revolutionary perpetual calendar module. This was followed by a clutch of other watches including minute repeaters for Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breguet and a Grande Sonnerie for Audemars Piguet.
Up until the early 1990s, Renaud & Papi operated primarily as a design and R&D studio
