Louis Moinet Luxury Wristwatches

Louis Moinet Timepieces – History

The Louis Moinet brand was born when Jean-Marie Schaller and Micaela Bartolucci, after working in the watch industry for many years, took the plunge and decided to make their own dreams and concepts come true. The result is the pair’s tangible passion for horology.

Bartolucci and Schallers brand name is one that expressed their desire to share their rich cultural heritage, the beautiful movements they would be using, and the history of watchmaking that binds them in so many ways. And thus they settled upon Louis Moinet, a watchmaker of considerable note who lived from 1768 to 1853, Moinet was born in Bourges, France, the son of well-off farming folk. He was highly intelligent and pursued classical studies. During this time he also learned the art of watchmaking from a master watchmaker and was simultaneously tutored in art by an Italian painter. Moinet left for Rome at the age of twenty, where he resided for five years studying classical architecture, sculpting, and painting, and subsequently moved to Florence to perfect his skills.

Returning to Paris, Moinet became a professor of fine arts at the Louvre. At this time he also returned to one of his previous loves, watchmaking, continuing theoretical and practical studies. He later became president of the Chronometry Society of Paris as well as a member of a number of educated and artistic groups. By the time Moinet met Abraham-Louis Breguet, Breguet was already famous. The great man immediately recognized Moinet’s talent, and the two began a long collaboration. Moinets biography, which was written by M. Delmas, vice president of the Chronometry Society of Paris, proclaims, “‘From 1811 on, Moinet became Breguets personal adviser.”

Technological Improvements by Moinet

Moinet amassed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of watchmaking and in practical terms also improved upon some of the technology prevalent in the day, even introducing the concept of
a balance cock. Seeking to share his great knowledge, he published his Nouveau Traité Géntr&eAstronomique et Civil d’Horlogerie Thtorique et Pratigue in two volumes in 1848, a landmark publication at the time.

The estate he left behind at his death included a number of his own excellent artworks as well as clocks he created for kings and other personalities, today on display in important museums such as the Louvre in Paris and the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Though the Louis Moinet brand is new to the United States, the company has been manufacturing and distributing various unique limited edition timepieces in the rest of the world for the past four years. New investors in the brand see a novel concept coinciding with new official distribution in the worlds largest single watch market. The expertly decorated, unique vintage movements utilized until now have not been banned from Louis Moinets collection, but they must now share the spotlight with original Swiss technology. Schaller is banking on some of the industrys most gifted young watchmakers to co-create the innovative mechanics now at home in the brand’s Vertalis and Tempograph models, for example. Louis Moinet relies on Concepto as well as Sébastien Rousseaus gifted team in this regard.

Now at home in Sainte-Blaise with his company, Schaller explains his short-term goal as ‘to ‘revisitS different complications. The retrograde (of the Tempograph) is a good example. Retrograde is for sure one category of complications, but I hope you will agree that the Tempograph stands out as 100 percent different from other retrograde products.’ And right he is.

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