In just over 20 years, Francois-Paul Journe has gone from being a budding artisanal watchmaker known by a handful of cognoscenti, to a name who shares the spotlight with auction behemoths such as Patek Philippe and Rolex, all while maintaining the artisanal and pure watchmaking genetic codes of his first years.

Fascinated by tourbillon watches, Journe decided to transpose Abraham-Louis Breguet’s invention into a wristwatch but also to improve it with the addition of a remontoire system - a constant force device used to provide an equal amount of energy disregarding the winding level of the mainspring, thus resulting in greater accuracy and amplitude. The first prototype was completed in 1991 with little, if any fanfare from the industry. He revisited his tourbillon wristwatch in 1999 in order to fund the launch of his eponymous brand and used a subscription system for his first twenty tourbillon wristwatches, each individually numbered on the dial. These were offered to his close friends and clients.

The present Tourbillon à Remontoire d’Egalité is one of the earlier production pieces dating from 2001. The majority of Journe’s Tourbillon models were made with yellow gold dials and the present example is one of the very rare examples made with a white gold dial giving the watch a superbly stealth monochrome look.