o reach the workshop of Raúl Pagès, you have to take the tiny train that leads from Le Locle – from the station overlooking the historical workshops of the Zenith manufacture – to the tiny village of Les Brenets on the other side of the Jura mountains. The journey takes around ten minutes on a narrow single-track railway dating back to the 19th century, which passes through sublime forest scenery and tiny tunnels that look as if they were carved out by a pickaxe. From there, walk a few hundred metres towards Les Brenets Lake, turn left into Rue Pierre Seitz and at number 10 you will find the workshop of Raúl Pagès, the laureate of the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize for Independent Creatives, awarded in Paris in February 2024.

It was here, at the beginning of the last century, that Pierre Seitz cut rubies for watches and invented the Seitz jewelling tool, a modest-looking invention but one which, at the time, sent watchmaking productivity soaring.

And it is here, on these very same premises, that we find Raúl Pagès bent over his workbench, far from the Parisian lights, galas, limousines and the rousing applause inside the futuristic Louis Vuitton Foundation.

On the evening of the award, Raúl Pagès had tears in his eyes as he received his prize: one year of personal mentoring from La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton in Geneva and a grant of €150,000. That sum, he said, will enable him to recruit “at least one extra watchmaker” and add some new capabilities to his operation.

Born not far from here, in Le Val-de-Ruz (Neuchâtel canton), into a family of Spanish origin with no links to watchmaking, the young Raúl, who loved drawing, was attracted “to a career both artistic and artisanal from a very young age”. So why not watchmaking, which combines both! At the age of 15, on the advice of a friend and after a brief work placement that he loved, he enrolled at the Le Locle school of watchmaking.

He left seven years later, having completed not only the usual four-year course, but also two years specialising in restoration – his passion – and complications, plus another year in design and development. At the age of 22, he was a fully-fledged watchmaker – “a complete all-rounder”, he confirms with a smile.

Caterpillars, frogs and eggs

The year is 2006 and Raúl Pagès has just sent an unsolicited application to Parmigiani Fleurier. His dream: to join the company’s restoration workshop. His luck is in – a position has just become vacant. He’s hired.

Silkworm: this automaton imitates the complex motion of a caterpillar, driven by a complex internal mechanical system.

“Those were six fantastic years during which I learned so much about ancient techniques, know-how like goldsmithing, enamelling, engraving and chasing, gold-leafing methods, even glass-making,” he says. “I was lucky enough to work on exceptional pieces, for the fabulous Maurice Sandoz collection and the Patek Philippe Museum, for example.”

The Frog: like the amphibian it resembles, this restored automaton leaps forwards thanks to a complex system of hammers that strike its abdomen.

It also gave him the opportunity to be involved in restoring several historical automata. And not just any – the Swan egg by Fabergé, the Moses Striking the Rock with a Stick pocket watch complete with splitting rock and surging water, the magnificent crawling Caterpillar No. 3 and the delightful Leaping Frog…

From leaping frog to detent watch, via the Tortoise…

In 2012, Raúl Pagès left Parmigiani Fleurier to become an independent watchmaker. “I’d started to get the creative itch,” he tells us. “In my spare time I’d succeeded in designing my own tortoise automaton in 3D. Besides which, when I was in restoration I’d also worked on very technical items, pieces by Houriet, detent watches and so on. Anyway, I set up as an independent watchmaker and devoted one whole year to making the Tortoise, for which I’d already drawn up all the plans. I did everything by hand without any CNC, alone at my workbench for the movement and with independent artisans for the engraving, the enamelling, the gem-setting, all of whom I’d met when working as a restorer for Parmigiani. In 2013, I presented my Tortoise. A one-of-a-kind piece.”

The 300 parts of the Tortoise automaton’s movement are hand-crafted in the finest watchmaking tradition. Finishes: hand-bevelling, guilloché, Geneva stripes. The shell is engraved and enamelled by local artisans. The shell, legs and head are in 18-karat gold. The claws are set with diamonds and the eyes decorated with sapphires. The Tortoise is wound by a key and advances by moving its legs and head. A one-off piece.

…and the Soberly Onyx

“I had a huge amount of positive feedback,” the watchmaker goes on. “But I wasn’t able to sell it. I must admit I was a bit disappointed and did did a lot of soul-searching. What was I going to do now? In the meantime, I worked as a self-employed restorer. And in parallel, I began designing my first watch. I started off with a Cyma ébauche from the 1950s, which I reworked completely, making a new balance and bridge and redoing all the finishes. I made a new onyx dial. I wanted something simple, minimalist, but with lots of meticulous detail. Architecture is a passion of mine, the Art Deco period inspires me. And in 2016 my Soberly Onyx was ready – 10 pieces in pink or white gold.”

The aptly named Soberly Onyx, price: CHF 48,000

The road to RP1

Commercially speaking, the Soberly Onyx enabled him to keep his head above water. But it was three or four years before he managed to sell all ten watches. That little nest egg safely in his pocket, he at last threw himself into the production of his first movement – “designed and manufactured from A to Z”.

The RP1 Régulateur à Détente

His idea was to “pay tribute to precision timekeeping”. Having been “lucky” enough, as he puts it, to restore precision pocket watches, including detent escapement watches, that was the direction he decided to take despite being aware of the intrinsic difficulty of adapting the detent movement to a watch made for the wrist.

“No one has ever really manage to industrialise the detent movement,” he says. And to underscore the chronometric focus of the detent movement, he opted for a regulator-type display, like the ultra-accurate clocks that in former times showed the official time in watchmaking workshops.

Purity and sobriety: the RP1 Régulateur à Détente. Large balance wheel, 18,000 vph. Since the escape wheel beats at half the usual frequency, the seconds hand advances only 2.5 times per second instead of five, and the movement, instead of going “tick-tock/tick-tock”, goes “tock/tock/tock”.

The advantage of the detent escapement compared with the traditional Swiss anchor escapement is that it delivers impulses directly to the balance wheel instead of via the pallet fork. This improves performance, because by delivering one single impulse per oscillation instead of the two of a traditional anchor escapement, the balance wheel swings more freely and with less disturbance, thereby improving timekeeping accuracy. It also dispenses with the need for oiling. But the major disadvantage of the detent escapement is its sensitivity to shocks due precisely to this “freedom”, which can even go so far as to cause the balance wheel to stop turning.

The solution he found was simple and elegant, inspired by a patent filed by Émile James in 1895. A beak at the end of the detent lever engages with a cam which acts directly on the balance shaft. In the event of a shock, it prevents the balance from recoiling and skipping a tooth and possibly becoming dislocated, which would bring the whole mechanism to a halt.

“Visibility has soared with the Louis Vuitton Prize”

Released in January 2022, the RP1 Régulateur à Détente “has finally become a sensation,” as Raúl Pagès proudly says.

“Now, and in fact even before the prize, my order book is full (editor’s note: for the moment he plans to produce 20 pieces a year). That’s several years of work. You have to remember that adjusting the detent escapement alone takes several weeks of work per watch. Everything is hand-made. You have to adjust the meshing of the cogs step by step. The adjustments are tiny, you have to fine-tune everything, down to the two springs that act on the detent. It’s impossible to industrialise. To my knowledge, only Jürgensen, Kari Voutilainen and Christophe Claret have attempted it.”

The beak terminating the detent (the balance wheel has been removed for better visibility)

As for the exterior, Raúl Pagès has designed everything, from the steel case – “to assert the watch’s technical side” – to its layered dial and its hands. As an architecture enthusiast, for the seconds sub-dial he opted for a blue directly inspired by the palette pioneered by Le Corbusier. One small but superb detail is that the notches in the raised dial flange act as the minute markers. The Louis Vuitton Prize has given the work of Raúl Pagès undreamed-of visibility far beyond the narrow circle of specialist collectors. “It’s an extraordinary stroke of luck,” he admits, and one which seems to have galvanised him for his future projects.

These are: three one-of-a-kind examples of his régulateur à détente with unusual dials (editor’s note; there is talk of collaboration with Anita Porchet – see the article on page 76), and an as yet mysterious RP2 project with a traditional anchor escapement but a mechanical “particularity”, on which we have no further information. And a return to stone dials. But, it seems, automata continue to fascinate him.

When the tortoise becomes a hare...