The Art of guilloché, improving my skills

On Saturday [my gift to myself for my birthday :)] I had the great honour to improve my guilloché skills at the atelier of Jochen Benzinger. Jochen Benzinger is one of the most well known master-guillocheur in the world. He is working with hundred years old rose engine turning and straight line engine turning machines! And yes, he does have an amazing collection of these guilloché machines. It is like if you are entering a beautiful museum when you are visiting Jochen Benzinger's atelier. When ever I do visit Jochen Benzinger it is really amazing to see the guilloché machines, to see when he is working on them and for sure pretty cool when I can work myself on this beautiful machines. The more, Jochen Benzinger is an amazing person, always taking time for chatting, explaning everything in the smallest details and the master behind his very special and extremely exclusive timepieces.

Atelier Benzinger

Guilloché is the evolution of the royal craft known as ornamental turnery. From these turning lathes watch artists developed beautiful guilloché machines the likes of which Abraham-Louis Breguet also cut his uniquely characteristic dials. Dials guilloché by hand remain unsurpassed in terms of their noble appearance to this day.This rare, historically meaningful art form can be found in all work done by Jochen Benzinger. The more Benzinger dials get finished with original Breguet frost, which is not used anymore nowadays at other brands due to highly cosuming time and as well the extremely complicated process of finishing.

Focusing on getting a Moirée guilloché done. Benzinger does use the Moirée design in his " Subskription Moirée V" watch for the dial.

Me working on one of Jochen Benzinger's rose engine turning machines

Getting a "Strahlen-guilloché" design finished

Working on the straight line engine turning machine

For me it is an outstanding honour to represent the timepieces made by Benzinger to my clients and a great honour to know this master guillocheur and great person!

Kind regards
Christian