Talking with Giulio Papi
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This was definitely an honour on my part as Giulio (and the initial partner Dominic Renaud) has been the guiding light behind a number of the technical developments in watches over the past two decades. He was, and is, a prodigious talent, a very personable man, and already a legend within the watchmaking industry. His winning of the lifetime achievement award at the Geneva Grand Prix at the end of last year seemed to usher in a suitable moment to reflect on his career, the watches he thinks highly of, and what might lie in the future for the watch industry.
Giulio grew up in the middle of watchmaking in La Chaux de Fonds during a time when the region was in the midst of its worst crisis (the quartz era). His interest was always in the mechanics of things (be it in cars, planes, or watches), it just so happened that watches were the local industry. This was not the same interest as (say) Richard Mille; he did not want to race cars, he wanted to understand how they work, and how they could work that much better.
On announcing to his father in 1980 that his future lay in watchmaking, he was told that while no one wants to learn and you will probably have a lonely career, with no one else around, you will also get all the work! And so, with such monopolistic ideas in place, Giulio Papi entered the local watchmaking school at 15. His father was right in one respect, the class sizes were small, and in fact, teaching was on a one to one basis. Giulio learned from a Master watchmaker, and he learned all about designing and inventing timepieces, as well as the basic task of maintaining watch movements.
The 4 years of apprenticeship passed at increasing speed as Giulio learned to love watchmaking. In 1984, the newly qualified watchmaker joined Audemars Piguet. After about 18 months in the job, Giulio was shown a complicated Grand Sonnerie that had come in for service. He enquired if he could work on the piece and was duly informed that in about 20 years, if he was successful enough and if a place became available, he would then be able to work on such watches. This proved too long a time period to wait for the young Giulio and hence, in 1986 at the grand old age of 21, with Dominic Renaud, Giulio Papi set up Renaud and Papi SA as an independent workshop to work on complicated horological mechanisms. Their timing could not have been more ideal.
It was in the latter part of the 1980’s where the genesis of Swiss watchmaking’s renewal started. One such believer, in not only the renewed taste for high end mechanical watches, but also complications, was Gunter Blumleim. He held a majority ownership and ran Jaeger-LeCoultre, IWC, and Lange and Sohne, and it was Blumleim who approached Renaud and Papi to work on the new complications that would signal the re-emergence of the Swiss and German watchmaking industry. The first piece they worked on was a Grand Complication for IWC. Today APR&P (as they are widely known) are the high end manufacturer of tourbillons and repeaters, in numbers as well as quality, to a number of brands (not just Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille).
Today, the ownership structure of Renaud and Papi is very different. Renaud has since retired, and Giulio runs the business that is now called Audemars Piguet Renaud and Papi SA to reflect that the majority shareholding (in the form of 78.4 percent of the share ownership) is from the family held watch firm from down the road where (with some irony) his career started. Giulio still retains a 20 percent share with the remaining small share held by the current CEO.
Given Giulio’s long career, and the importance of Renaud and Papi in developing a number of watch innovations in recent years, it was natural to talk of which watches he holds in high regard. I split the choice set into 3: a watch outside Audemars Piguet, a watch by Audemars Piguet, and a watch by Richard Mille (as there is a corner of APR&P that is dedicated to the research end of the RM brand). For the Audemars Piguet watch, Giulio picked an AP Grand Sonnerie for its complexity; for the Richard Mille, he picked the RM002 as it started a number of research ideas (especially into the use of carbon); and for the watch outside of AP, Giulio picked the Lange and Sohne Tourbograph.
The mention of carbon led to further discussion on the use of the material as not only a baseplate, but also as a case. The forged carbon had the same properties (in terms of finish and durability) as steel, but the baseplate had required separate testing. Even before the carbon fibre base plate saw the light of day, it had taken 5 years to find a supplier (in the US) who could supply the carbon in a necessary condition. The durability of the material was tested by subjecting it to ultrasonic waves, and until the US supplier was found, most of the carbon baseplates had ended up as a black amorphous mess after the tests
While Renaud and Papi had started the growth in small firms, working on complicated horological problems, the firm had some notable offspring. Not least among them being Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey who had started off their own Complitime SA, but who are now better known in the watch industry as Greubel Forsey. Giulio commented that their work was brilliant in a classical way, in that their work did not involve the use of abstract new materials such as carbon or titanium aluminide, and their finish and decoration on pieces was as high as you could go. I just had to ask, which Greubel Forsey piece did he like the most; perhaps not surprisingly it was visually (and technically) complex Double Tourbillon a Techique.
So with others forming their own brand identities, the question arises as to whether or not a Renaud and Papi brand would ever be a possible. It is not a simple question to answer. The problem for a Renaud & Papi brand would be the interaction of the firm with other brands. Although it is a future possibility, for now, it is on the back burner.
There is also the question of what would a Renaud and Papi brand offer in the future, and for that matter, what the future would look like for the Swiss watch industry. Giulio hoped that the industry would produce good work; watches that were reliable, creative, that manufacturers’ would strive for excellence rather than being satisfied with their current status quo. Part of the striving would be to produce watches with modern designs.
So what watch was Giulio Papi wearing? A Royal Oak Quantieme Perpetual from about 18 to 20 years ago. Was this the style and design of watch that Giulio would choose? Yes and no. The watch design from almost 40 years ago looks as new today as it did then. And there in lies the need to push style and design. The design of the classic watch today was the new design a hundred years ago. Who knows what the opinion will be on today’s designs in 40 years, or in 100 years? History will decide on that one; what matters is that the industry strives for new designs today so that history can judge.
