Harry Winston Opus 9: Inside Agenhor

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.

Now we move on to the movement design area where we see the 3D models and simulations of the newest Van Cleef and Arpels piece, "Le Pont des Amoureux", The Lovers Bridge.  We will see more in a minute.

Here we take a quick look at the inside of an Opus 9.

Back to the Pont des Amoureux with it's double retrograde display.

Jean-Marc explains to us the details of the functioning of the watch on the computer display.  Here it is possible to move parts and see how everything works together.  A great instructional tool.

The base movement is a small JLC movement which is placed to the side in the module.

Here from the back we can see how the module is driven by the cannon of the JLC movement which is carrying the smaller gold colored gear at the left.

Many of the parts are made using the LIGA process which grows the metal instead of cutting as you do when machining.  It is possible to make very fanciful forms and include springs without increasing the price of the component.  You can almost make out here that the levers driving the man and woman on the dial are also made in those forms.  We will see that better on a computer screen below.

On the Lover's Bridge the suiter advances once an hour to display the minutes, la belle advances with the hours meeting her man twice a day in the center of the bridge.  At noon and midnight when the two meet in the center of the bridge the man holds her, pulls her to him for a second and gives her a kiss before letting her go again.  That movement was explained to us by Jean-Marc as being a result of how it was ensured mechanically that the figures both fall back from the center at the same time (which we can choose to believe or not).

The dials are hand painted fired enamel.

Here we see on the screen the teeth of the gear driving the cams.  This includes the Agenhor patented tooth form to eliminate the play between gears.  If it is really necessary here, I don't know.  But it is only made possible by the LIGA manufacturing method.

Here we can see on the screen the module with the bridges removed giving a clear view to the levers of the movement.

With the bridges back on.

After this very interesting visit, which opened my eyes to a brand that I wasn't aware of doing such, as they say, poetic complications, we where very surprised.  Snow in Geneva.

On the way to a nice after visit dinner in Geneva.

I would like to thank Jean-Marc Wiederrecht for his welcome at his company Agenhor as well as Daniel for organising this visit.

Don


This message has been edited by DonCorson on 2010-02-08 09:45:44 This message has been edited by AnthonyTsai on 2010-02-08 12:37:46 This message has been edited by AnthonyTsai on 2010-02-11 06:19:23