Like many other enthusiastic collectors Hartmut Zantke became an author because of his desire to know more about Louis Audemars and his watches. His wish to find out more about this celebrated watchmaker (1782 – 1833) began, as so often, when he held a watch signed “Louis Audemars, Le Brassus” in his hands at an auction preview, and could not understand why the relatively low reserve price for this glorious movement, did not reflect its amazing burnished steel components, with bevelled edges, dark blued screws and perfect gilding of the platens or its superbly worked gear teeth and polished springs. If the cuvette or the immaculate white enamel dial had been signed “A. Lange & Söhne” or “Patek Philippe, Genève”, the catalogue price for a watch with self-strike mechanism, two time zones or with minute repetition and chronograph would have been far higher.  In the auction the watch did not go for very much above the estimated reserve and was snapped up by the collector, now turned author.  But what had he got? – A beautiful, technically very important watch with a virtually unknown brand.  “Louis Audemars” was not “Audemars Piguet”. The available literature revealed very little, but the movement serial number appeared to be remarkably low.  There seemed to be no lists of watches, no one had ever seen any records of movements or sales archives. So Hartmut Zantke set out on the trail. He made many journeys into Switzerland, wrote letters faxes and emails, and bought un-cased movements and several watches. He made telephone calls across the world and finally made contact with Paul Audemars a direct descendant living in England – and then things started to move.  One bit of information followed another, as did the watches. Museums and auction catalogues were systematically trawled and books about pocket watches painstakingly read page by page. Literature about the Vallée de Joux came in bit by bit.

     After three years of research the collector, by now expert on the subject of Louis Audemars, was able to contemplate publication of his text. In 2002 we came together through the good offices of Stefan Muser and just a year later there was the book (over 600 pages with illustrations of about 152 watches).  A comprehensive history of this obscure region out of which came virtually all the complicated pocket watches in the world – regardless of whether the signatures state London, Paris, St. Petersbourg, Geneva or Glashütte.  The movement and very often the entire watch came from this unique, tranquil valley in the mountains north of Geneva, with its eponymous lake, where the names of world famous watchmakers, LeCoultre, Piguet, Audemars, Aubert, Meylan and others, are still to be found within a few square miles. At the beginning of the 19th Century when every part of a watch was still made by hand the Louis Audemars company assembled the best craftsmen, specialists in perpetual calendars, strike-works and chronometers to work under his name, to build extraordinarily high quality watch movements. Watches such as the “La Russe”, “La Millèsime”,  “La Royale” or the “Universelle” which incorporated features such as crown winding and hand setting mechanisms, perpetual calendars, minute repeaters, self strike works, time zone selection and many other functions were hardly ever emulated later.  Only the “Graves” and the “Caliber 89” by Patek Philippe reached the same pinnacle of achievement.

Christian Pfeiffer-Belli, Munich 

Louis-Benjamin Audemars

Hartmut Zantke Published by SOZIALKARTEI-VERLAG and Christian Pfeiffer-Belli 2003. 31.4 x 24.5cm, hard covers in slip case. 507 pages including 64 pages of b/w and 143 pages of colour illustrations. Text in German/English. ISBN 300 0121 91-9.

     This Heavy-weight (4kg) coffee-table type of book, with a foreword by Paul Audemars, a descendant of Louis-Benjamin Audemars, is a great credit to the author Hartmut Zantke who was determined to give L-B A the recognition he surely deserves. Subtitled “His Life and Work” and “The Rise and Fall of a Watchmaking Dynasty”, the book is divided into two parts, narrative and illustrative; with a fairly brief history of the development of the Swiss watch industry, including the watchmaking regions of Neuchâtel, Vaud and of course the Vallée de Joux, where L-B A established his workshop in 1811. Then follows a very detailed biography of the man himself, his ancestors, descendants and successors.

     Sadly, like many fine craftsmen, despite undoubted technical know-how, he and his sons François and Auguste, together with his widow after his death in 1833, seem to have lacked financial expertise. Perhaps because of their initial success they went ahead and opened businesses in London, Paris etc. and their very frequent borrowing from banks led them to many difficulties and eventual liquidation in 1885. Their successor company AUDEMARS FRÈRES seemed to inherit many of the financial shortcomings they had suffered, and despite producing some excellent work, some of which related to the completion and finishing of blanks and ébauche originally started by the L-B A company, it went into liquidation in 1909. Over the years the L-B A Company and its successors supplied both complete watches and ébauche to many famous names including; BREGUET, HENRY CAPT, DENT, CHARLES FRODSHAM, JURGENSEN, CHARLES OUDIN, PATEK PHILIPPE, LE ROY & FILS etc.; making the book an excellent resource for anyone studying the products of the Vallée de Joux. A number of other successor companies were later founded, such as LOUIS AUDEMARS & CO LTD in London, run by Marcel Ernest Audemars until he died in 1968.

     One thing I was particularly pleased to note was the clarification the author has made in emphasizing that no direct link has ever existed between L-B A or his successors and AUDEMARS PIGUET SA of Le Brassus even though they share the Audemars name! The latter was of course founded in 1875, whereas the L-B A company went into liquidation in 1885, having produced about 9000 complete watches in the 74 years of its existence.

     That L-B A produced some very rare and special pocket watches in his lifetime is not in doubt. The illustrations, the majority of which are superb, convey both the finish and the complications in great detail. It is unfortunate that a very few, mainly black and white illustrations, are not up the generally high standard. This seems to be due to the author reproducing directly from other publications, as in the case of no. 7 on page 216, taken from Watches by Clutton and Daniels.

     Apart from some minor typographical errors, my only other criticism is that in the chapter on the Audemars Perpetual Calendar, the author states “Who invented the first watch with a perpetual calendar is still unknown”. Surely he is aware that Thomas Mudge produced a perpetual calendar watch in 1764 that can be seen in the British Museum!

Grahame Brooks, England

Clocks, The International Magazine for Horological Collectors & Restorers, April 2004

The name Louis-Benjamin Audemars is perhaps not well-known in the horological world, certainly less so than the celebrated Audemars-Piguet, a firm founded over 50 years after Louis-Benjamin Audemars first set up his company in the Vallée de Joux region of Switzerland. Audemars-Piguet was founded in 1875 in Le Brassus by Jules Audemars and Edward August Piguet, both of whom were related to principals in the firm of Louis Audemars.

     The lack of knowledge in the horological world about the work of Audemars has now been addressed by Hartmut Zantke, an expert in Audemars and his successors, author of LOUIS-BENJAMIN AUDEMARS, HIS LIFE AND WORK,  published by Christian Pfeiffer-Belli. This is a magnificent large-format work stretching to over 500 pages, illustrated throughout with high-quality photographs, most of which are in colour.

     The book begins with a concise history of the Swiss watchmaking industry, tracing it back to the work of Peter Henlein of Nuremburg, “the first known tradesman to make a pocket-watch”, before looking at watchmaking in the Cantons of Neuchâtel and Vaud and then moving in for a close look at the Vallée de Joux itself, about 50 km north-west of Geneva in the south of the Jura.

     The information on Louis-Benjamin Audemars starts on p52, with a chapter entitled “The origins of the House of Louis Audemars”. The line of descent begins with André Hodemart, who emigrated to Western Switzerland from France because of religious persecution. At some point the name “Hodemart” became corrupted to “Audemars” and the line began.

     Louis-Benjamin was born on 22^nd May 1782, the son of Pierre-Henri Audemars, a cutter of precious and semi-precious stones for the watch and jewellery trades, and Suzette Piguet. At the age of 16, Louis-Benjamin was apprenticed to Philipe Samuel Mèylan. After completing his apprenticeship, he worked for about two years for Breguet, who considered him a “master pupil”. This explains why he used the Breguet calibre as the basis for development of his own calibres and why he had a good business relationship with Breguet in Paris.

     When, in 1811, Meyland decided to go to Geneva along with Isaac Piguet, he set up Louis-Benjamin as his successor, leaving him his workshop, designs, components and movements, as well as all his tools and equipment. Louis-Benjamin thus had a viable business (which he called the “Maison Louis Audemars”) right from the start.

     Immediately he began to modernise and expand, producing more and more complicated calibers for the watchmaking industry in Geneva. He was a perfectionist; time and cost were secondary considerations.

     In 1770, Jean-Antoine Lépine had introduced the so-called “Geneva Bar” movement, which allowed the manufacture of a much flatter, thinner watch. One of Louis-Benjamin’s greatest achievements was to replace the traditional movement with Breguet developments of the Lépine design. Another of his great talents was his ability to fulfill the demands made upon him to supply the industry with a wide range of complicated watches and to do so successfully over a long period of time.

Rita Shenton, UK