Les Ateliers d'Art

Les Ateliers d'Art is the name under which Jaquet Droz groups its wristwatches fitted with mechanical automatons: the line that most directly carries onto the wrist the heritage the brand was founded on. Between 1768 and 1774 Pierre Jaquet-Droz, together with his son Henri-Louis and collaborator Jean-Frédéric Leschot, had built the Writer, the Draughtsman and the Musician, three life-size humanoid automatons capable of writing, drawing and playing music, exhibited at the courts of Europe and still preserved and functioning today at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Neuchâtel.

The modern manufacture revived this tradition starting in 2012, with the launch of the Bird Repeater: a watch in which, at the press of a button, a mechanical bird on the dial opens its beak, flaps its wings and sings thanks to a miniaturized sapphire whistle, while a repeater mechanism chimes the hours. The piece's success led, the following year, to the Charming Bird, an evolution of the singing mechanism awarded the "Exception Mécanique" prize in 2015 at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève, and in subsequent years to other animated scenes — including butterflies, blooming flowers and dragons — that expand the line's decorative repertoire.

Every watch in the collection is made in extremely limited series, often of 28 pieces, and requires collaboration between watchmakers, engravers, enamellers and mechanical-sound specialists: artisanal work that makes Les Ateliers d'Art the point where the La Chaux-de-Fonds manufacture most openly declares its continuity with the founder's automatons.