The Curious Case of the Vanished Watchmaker

By Victoria Gill

11 Months Ago

It would appear that the real Charles Girardier was as elusive as he was dead. Patrick Ulm, a Swiss gentleman of veneration, appeared on the steps of the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire à Genève with his indomitable frame draped in hunting tweeds topped by a black neckerchief that could be — and sometimes was — half-drawn over the face. “All my encounters are by chance or by fate,” were his words upon greeting.

I had journeyed on the red eye from Heathrow to investigate the disappearance of the 18th century celebrity horologist and the Swiss financier who’d resurrected his name. Our assignation took place on the coldest day of winter. “Imagine this, an Englishwoman travelling to Geneva on the day it starts to snow!”

To understand Monsieur Ulm’s journey, we must turn back time to 2018 (via 1809 — the year of M. Girardier’s appointment as Maître Horologer of Genève). Assigned to London for a business conference, the banker had slipped away. You see, unbeknownst to anyone, Ulm had developed a fascination for Agatha Christie (“without her I would not be walking with you today”) and endeavoured to visit her former summer home, Greenway, set in the rolling Devon hills overlooking the River Dart. Stalking through the Palladian white mansion, past the great crime writer’s artefact displays of decorative skulls, ancient temple ceramics, candle snuffers and exotic animal figurines — Monsieur Ulm had stumbled upon the murder mystery doyenne’s collection of enamel pocket watches — inspiration for the character of none other than Hercule Poirot, Ulm suspects. All were created by the grand — and largely vanished — horologists of the Age of Enlightenment. One face in particular caught the Swiss financier’s eye: centrepiece of the display was an enamelled timepiece bearing a portrait of a disrobed lady inscribed ‘Girardier l’Ainé.’

“It was meaningful, because Christie would not connect with an unknown and untalented watchmaker, knowing her and how meticulous and exact she is,” Ulm had deduced in the stately setting where such masterpieces as Dead Man’s Folly and Five Little Pigs had taken seed. Inspired to solve another mystery from the arch crime writer’s cannon — the case of the vanished 18th century Genevan horologer — “I thought there must be something special here, and I was right.”

“Instinct is a marvellous thing, it can neither be explained nor ignored,” to quote the words of Christie herself. Monsieur Ulm’s Europe-wide hunt led him from Greenway to Paris’ Petit Palais, where an exquisite, gold signed renaissance-style pocket watch was displayed, a secret society of worldwide collectors from whom the financier sourced several antique pieces at auction and here, at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire à Genève. The horologer had been unmasked as Charles Girardier masquerading under the pseudonym ‘Girardier L’Ainé.’

Now, without further ado, let us wind the clock forward to the autumn of 2021. I’d first met the enigmatic Monsieur Ulm at a watch fair at a London hotel. He had reprised the Charles Girardier name a few months after his horological quest began at Greenway and subsequently won the prestigious GPHG “Ladies’ Complication Watch Prize” for his inaugural timepiece. “I was in shock for two months!” the then-novice horologer exclaimed. I tried the 1809 Dark Red Flying Tourbillon “Salt Flower” mysterious signature model myself: with hundreds of diamonds dazzling the dial, it came enamelled in a claret one could drown in with the sparkling Mystery CG monogram moving and meeting when the wrist is held at 45 degrees. It was, indeed, a seductive face, flecked with 24 karat paillons, a decoration that was approaching obsoletion. “We revived it!” Monsieur Ulm boasted, explaining how he’d traced a Lyonnaise widow in possession of one of the world’s last remaining estampie machines dating back some one hundred and fifty years who’d taught him the technique. It was, indeed, the kind of watch that one could form an obsession over.

I’d mentioned the case to a most mysterious and enigmatic lady I’d happened to meet for cocktails one night at The Stafford London hotel. “I think you might be onto something; find out what you can…” she whispered.

That’s how I found myself in Geneva on the coldest day of the year. Monsieur Ulm had preferred to discuss his findings over fondue in a mountainside chalet; I felt it prudent to be ensconced in the hustle of Lake Geneva. Eventually, we agreed to dine at the oldest café in the Canton. Restaurant Les Armures is set in the heart of the historic old town. Embellished with stained glass windows, coats of arms and a suit of armour, its provenance charts back to the 12th century. We wondered whether Charles Girardier had dined — and indeed was maybe calling us — there. “Look how he tried to introduce the date,” Monsieur Ulm fawned, gazing sentimentally at a static calendar dial with its 31 lines arranged onto a chronometer, stroking the antique masterpiece’s grand feu enamel face.

It was here that Ulm confessed all on his obsession with his 18th century inspiration. The eminent watchmaker, Charles, signing off as Girardier ‘L’Ainé,’ meaning the elder, was born in 1757, the son of a Genevan horologist. He had one older brother who also entered the business of time. L’Ainé passed away in Paris at the ripe old age of 82. Lamentably, each of the brothers Girardiers’ children had perished at birth — when Charles and his brother died, so too did their name. I wondered, “But why, if he was the younger Girardier, did he call himself the Elder?”

It was an age of celebrity watchmaking, Ulm extolled. “The haute horologists were inventors, fascinating royalty and businessmen, they were like the Elon Musk and space explorers of their time to a public fascinated by mechanical engineering and new techniques. They were advancing more and more precise watches: first they had only the hours, then came the minutes and later the seconds.” How could it be assumed that Girardier was a celebrity watchmaker solely because his place of death, in 1839, was listed as Paris? I countered. “I have no evidence! There is no evidence!” said Ulm, shaking his head. “The three pieces in the museums gave me the proof that this is a real story. Living heritage is better evidence than any document we could find.”

Indeed, L’Ainé was a pioneer and innovator just like his successor. More than two hundred years ago he was experimenting with the calendar function, beguiling animations such as animals rotating on a dial within the aim of a portrait of a hunter, a Jacquemart expressed as the rotation of a windmill’s vanes and was recognised, in 1810, by the Society of Arts in Geneva, for his enamelled horological objets d’art. His signature, elaborately engraved gold Arabesque movement and onion-shaped dial are continued in Charles Girardier’s timepieces today, as are trailblazing animations, mysteries, movements and pioneering grand feu enamels. The renaissance, limited edition watch brand pioneered by Ulm first revived the paillon, their next model launched a prototypal fusion enamel, in the third a colour-graded camaïeu dial and in their soon-to-be-released fourth, a world-first frosted enamel face.

Mystified as to how a master horologist of Girardier’s talent and renown had simply disappeared, baffled by Monsieur Ulm’s celebrity assumptions with no concrete evidence of such and as to why the youngest son and brother of the Girardier family would assume the alias ‘The Elder,’ I retreated to the library on my London return. There, amongst some dusty annals on historical Swiss haute horology, I discovered several pieces that Ulm had either not uncovered or revealed.

Girardier’s talent for artistry, contemporaneous trends, complications, secrets and mysteries had taken another avenue that Monsieur Ulm had omitted to divulge — namely the most obscene erotic painted enamel dials one could conceive of hidden behind the externally innocent facades of the master horologist’s pocket watches. En vogue — and sold in the grand auction houses of Sotheby’s and its ilk today — these subversive pieces were the cutting edge of horological fashionability during the heady revolutionary years when Charles Girardier was active, from 1780 — 1839. Such pieces were largely commissioned by aristocrats as a means to show off or proposition with.

When the more austere Victorian era took hold — and the wristwatch replaced the pocket watch — the trend waned. Today hot horology is enjoying something of a renaissance — when Blancpain revived salacious dials in the 1980s, Breguet and Chopard followed suit. Ulysse Nardin, Jacob & Co and Richard Mille have recently launched titillating timepieces at the cutting edge of haute horology.

I confronted Monsieur Ulm with my findings when we next spoke and queried whether he was also considering riding the trend. “Definitely! It’s not something I mention so much, but definitely he made some erotic watches. You have to be very mature to come out with something like that. But I never say never!” Perplexed still as to the name, I spoke to a Flemish associate who revealed that while Aïné means elder, Aine — spelt without the inflections — has another meaning: groin! M. Girardier spelt his alias between the two — Ainé. “That’s probably why no-one was interested in the brand; they didn’t find the beautiful pieces in the museums or the hunting scenes and they got frightened. But it definitely helped him become famous and it definitely helped with the animated dial!” Monsieur Ulm concluded.

Ever-mindful of Christie’s mantra that, “Very few of us are what we seem,” I have finally solved the curious case of why the master watchmaker disappeared. Reader, Charles Girardier was cancelled!

CRAIG BANCROFT
Managing Director
Northcote

“ Once these big names started to get involved, others wanted to follow suit, and it just grew.”

The Curious Case of the Vanished Watchmaker

CRAIG BANCROFT Managing Director Northcote

CRAIG BANCROFT
Managing Director
Northcote