FRÉDÉRIC JOUVENOT - Automatic Chronograph Evolution

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Description

Add complications and singularities, outbid an offer already richly endowed with novelties? Better to take a step back, think, start again... This is how Frédéric Jouvenot has reached the Automatic Chronograph Evolution (ACE) concept, at the end of a logical and playful journey. Originally: a calibre born in 1940 in Moutier (Swiss Jura Arc), in a company that marked its time: the “Fabrique d’ébauches Vénus”.

The Venus 175 calibre at the base of the ACE chronograph is a well-crafted, intelligently designed and highly popular manual winding movement. Very early on in his watchmaking career, Frédéric Jouvenot became acquainted with these pieces whose manufacture had ceased in the 1960s as well as other chronographs of collection. He admired them immensely and went looking for them to repair, renovate and put them back on the collectors' market. About thirty pieces will pass through his hands.

Frédéric Jouvenot will push his approach ever further, until a real mutation that will see the Venus 175 manual reborn in automatic chronograph under the name of Automatic Chronograph Evolution, patented in 2008. The historical value of the movement is highlighted by the transparency of the caseback and respects the mechanical beauty of the original which still bears the traces of a plate stamped with the logo of the manufacturer Venus. As for the most spectacular part, the oscillating weight, it is staged on the dial, making the total reversal, the faces having exchanged their place!

To achieve this feat, Frédéric Jouvenot respected the architecture and balance of the movement by giving full visibility to the bridges that he highlighted by hand-finished decorations. The gold oscillating weight lives to the rhythm of its bearer, decorated with Côtes de Genève, it must at no time obscure the dial or the counters; it has therefore been perforated to open two circular skylights with the exact dimensions of the minute and small second counters.

Its creator also designed the case of his watch by collaborating with his supplier. He wanted it very comfortable on the wrist, curving the lugs to the maximum to follow the natural curve of the wrist. He then lightened the design of the case by hollowing out the lugs of the watch, giving it a very contemporary look. The Automatic Chronograph Evolution, assembled with the original movement of 1940 is manufactured in limited series, numbered from 1 to 18.