If you want to find a tiny oasis of old-school watchmaking art in Geneva, just walk a few minutes southwest along the Rhône, find the right staircase, knock on the right door, and you will find the always cheerful Svend Andersen and his traditional-style watch workshop. A detailed article about visiting the workshop is coming soon, but first, let's look at some of his latest creations - the Andersen Geneve Jumping Hours 40th Anniversary watch.
Andersen was born and trained as a watchmaker in Denmark and has an impressive, though not widely known, track record as a horologist. In 1963, he moved to Switzerland and worked for nine years from 1969 in the grand complications workshop at Patek Philippe, after which he established his own workshop as an independent watchmaker. Interestingly, he began by producing high-end cases for Italian collectors, which involved creating unique pieces, often with whimsical and unique time and calendar indicators.
The Andersen Geneve Jumping Hours 40th Anniversary watch belongs to one of the 1980 batches. In that particular model, a minute repeater was combined with a jumping 24-hour indicator. It was so successful that in 1998 Andersen created a variation on this theme for a limited series of Cartier Pasha “Grand Jour & Nuit”, consisting of 125 pieces. As he explains: “Since then, another series of 'Grand Jour & Nuit' has been released, various 'Pièce Unique' watches with jumping hours have been created, and two years ago Andersen Genève was honored to receive an order from Adrian of convopiece.com to create new 'Pièce Unique' watches with a jumping hours mechanism. In 2020-2021, Andersen Genève proudly released new watches with a Jumping Hours mechanism in honor of its 40th anniversary.
Aesthetics are always subjective, but I am confident that many will find the Andersen Geneve Jumping Hours 40th Anniversary watch delightfully beautiful. Its 38mm diameter is distributed with virtually perfect proportions between the bezel and the dial: the dial is extensive but not excessive - it is confidently held by the polished and domed bezel. The 19mm lug width also gives them a more unique touch, as do their concave shape and polished profile transitioning into a matte side case with a polished crown. All this is so easy and pleasing to the eye.
On the wrist, they look right at home, as perhaps only watches created with decades of experience can. There is something uniquely wonderful about the creations of old-school rock stars like Dufour, Andersen, Roth, and the like - it's their signature mix of stubbornness and expertise when working on what they often like to call “just right.” The Andersen Geneve Jumping Hours 40th Anniversary watch is full of this “rightness” both on and off the wrist. I know this because returning the watch was literally painful.
The star of the show is the guilloché dial, which is insanely complex and stunningly intricate. This is both the end result and the effort that, as one can immediately imagine, was required to bring it to life. It is made from 21-karat blued gold (which in itself is so enticing) using three different machines, none of which are modern CNC machines, but all are traditional hand-operated lathes. The three-dimensional structure and the way it interacts with light, in my experience, remains completely unrivaled when using cheaper stamping or laser methods. It is no secret that this guilloché dial has several tiny imperfections where the guillocheur either started or ended the pattern a tenth of a millimeter too far, or where some carved marks were left at the base of a triangle.
They are extremely rare, but the human eye, looking at the dial, adds them to the complete picture - and, oddly, the question is not what these microscopic imperfections add to the dial, but what their absence would take away from it. Guilloché dials combine the heavy aesthetic of an industrial product with the intricacy and lightness of something not made on a 600-pound lathe, but with the finesse of a human touch.
On the case back, there is a BlueGold ring, also made of 21-karat blued gold, this time with hand-engraved text “40 years of independent watchmaking.” The movement, honestly marked Frédéric Piguet 11.50 with the jumping hours mechanism, is developed and manufactured at Andersen Geneve. The FP 11.50 movement has been used in numerous luxury watches, but perhaps most relied upon by Blancpain. Thanks to its twin-barrel design, it can achieve a power reserve of up to 100 hours, which means it has a large power reserve used to drive the jumping hours indicator (an energy-intensive mechanism), while still providing an impressive 60-hour autonomy.
The overall case thickness is 9.22mm, which is quite acceptable for a watch with an automatic movement at the back, two barrels in the center, and a jumping hours module on top, crowned by a relatively thick guilloché dial. As expected, the massive rotor of the automatic winding system made of 18-karat yellow gold is also decorated with a grain d'orge guilloché pattern and a hand-engraved letter “A” in the center.
Front and back, the Andersen Geneve Jumping Hours 40th Anniversary watch is stunningly beautiful, not just because of its technical complexity or quality of execution, but because it exudes what can only be achieved through 60 years of experience. And the fact that you can take a 10-minute walk along the banks of the Rhône and shake hands with the man himself - and his two-person team, the watchmaker and co-owner of the brand Alex - only enhances the magic.
The price of the Andersen Geneve Jumping Hours 40th Anniversary watch is 37,800 Swiss francs in a 5N red gold case and 41,600 Swiss francs in a 950 platinum case, and they can be purchased directly from Andersen Geneve. It's a substantial sum, but perhaps more than just a great watch.