A Genevan maison assembling mechanical calibres, tourbillons and grand complications entirely by hand — where every escapement is regulated to within seconds across a full day.
ESCAPEMENT was founded in a single Genevan workshop where a watchmaker refused to ship a movement that drifted by more than a heartbeat a day. That obstinacy became method. Method became maison.
“We do not chase thinness, nor spectacle. We chase the second that never arrives late.”
Each calibre is conceived, decorated and regulated in-house — anglage cut by hand, bridges black-polished to a mirror, every wheel held to tolerances measured in microns. We sign nothing we have not finished ourselves.
Four references, each a different argument about how time should be measured. Hover a piece to read its complication set.
A flying tourbillon suspended over an openworked plate, cage rotating once each minute to defy the pull of gravity.
A perpetual calendar that knows the length of every month — and the leap year — until the year 2100.
Three gongs tuned by ear sound the hours, quarters and minutes on demand — a workshop’s most jealously guarded craft.
The maison’s essay in restraint — a hand-wound three-hander finished to the same standard as the complications above it.
Scroll to assemble the movement — from the bare mainplate to the regulating organ that gives the maison its name.
German-silver plates are cut, drilled and chamfered on bench lathes calibrated each morning. Nothing leaves this station until it sits flat to the light.
Edges are bevelled at 45° and polished against tin and diamantine until they throw a continuous, unbroken reflection. A single bridge can take a day.
Wheels, pinions and jewels are set with tweezers and a steady pulse. Each pivot is oiled with a measured droplet — too much, and the rate wanders.
The completed movement is timed in six positions over a fortnight. The régleur adjusts the balance spring by fractions until the rate holds across the day.
Select a complication to read what it does and what it costs in components, patience and time.
The entire escapement and balance are mounted inside a rotating cage, turning once per minute to average out the rate errors gravity introduces when a watch is held vertically. In the “volant” form, the cage floats with no upper bridge — pure theatre over the dial.
A mechanical memory of the Gregorian calendar — it tracks the differing lengths of months and the four-year leap cycle, requiring no correction until the year 2100. A 48-month program wheel does the remembering.
At the slide of a lever, hammers strike tuned gongs to chime the hours, quarter-hours and minutes — letting one read the time by ear. Each pair of gongs is hand-tuned to a musical interval; no two repeaters sound alike.
A stopwatch built into the watch — start, stop and reset elapsed time without disturbing the running of the hours. Our column-wheel coupling gives each pusher a crisp, mechanical click and permits a flyback reset on the fly.
A tiny secondary spring is rewound at regular intervals, delivering a perfectly constant force to the escapement regardless of how wound the mainspring is. The result is a rate that holds steady from full wind to the last hour of reserve.
“Few maisons still regulate by hand against the clock. ESCAPEMENT is one of the last — and the rate sheets prove it.” — Revue Horlogère · Genève, No. 214
A bespoke commission begins with a conversation in Geneva and ends, eighteen months later, with a movement engraved to your specification. We accept a limited number of private commissions each year.
