F.P.Journe is the Geneva house built around François-Paul Journe, born in Marseille in 1957, who took his watchmaker's diploma in Paris and then spent years restoring antique pieces in his uncle Michel Journe's workshop — an apprenticeship in eighteenth-century horology that still shapes everything the brand makes. He built his own tourbillon pocket watch as a young man, opened a workshop on the rue de Verneuil in Paris, and in 1991 made the prototype of a wristwatch carrying a remontoire, a first. From 1994 he worked on turning that one-off craft into a collection, and in 1999 he presented it under his own name with the Latin mark Invenit et Fecit — invented and made — and founded Montres Journe SA. The manufacture and its exhibition space sit in a listed 1892 building on the rue de l'Arquebuse, in Geneva's Plainpalais district, where output is counted in three or four watches a day.
The Classique collection is the heart of the catalogue: the Tourbillon Souverain, now with a vertical cage turning once every thirty seconds, remontoir d'égalité, deadbeat seconds and an 80-hour reserve in a 42 mm platinum or 18K 6N gold case; the Chronomètre à Résonance, which grew out of research begun in 1983 into two balances beating in sympathy; the Chronomètre Souverain and the Chronomètre Optimum; the Astronomic Souveraine and the ultra-slim Répétition Souveraine; the Quantième Perpétuel; and the Divine, Lune and Automatique Lune. The one that opened the brand to a wider audience is the Chronomètre Bleu — 39 mm in tantalum, a metal almost nobody machines, with a chrome-blue dial, twin barrels, 56 hours of autonomy and a freesprung balance adjusted in six positions. Since 2003 the movements have been made in 18K rose gold rather than brass, a decision no other modern maker had taken.
Two further lines complete the range. Line Sport gathers the Chronographe Rattrapante, the Centigraphe, the Automatique Réserve and the Chronomètre Furtif. Élégante is the outlier: an electro-mechanical watch that took eight years to develop, with every mechanical part made in-house and a Swiss microprocessor built for it, offering eight to ten years of autonomy in daily wear and up to eighteen on standby. A motion detector at 4:30 puts the watch to sleep after thirty-five minutes of stillness — the microprocessor keeps counting while the hands stop, then sends them back to the right time by the shortest route when it is picked up again — in trademarked Flat Tortue cases of 40 and 48 mm, in titanium or set with diamonds. The house has taken the Aiguille d'Or, the top prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève, three times, and runs its own boutiques in Geneva, Paris, New York, Boca Raton, Hong Kong and Beijing.
