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S02E03: Philippe Dufour: The Man Who Refused to Let the Past Be Thrown Away
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Contact: RistePodcast@gmail.com
Season 2, Episode 3 (swapped/moved to sneak in the "shill episode")
Philippe Dufour: The Man Who Refused to Let the Past Be Thrown Away
CORRECTION: Note that I misspoke in a section when I state “his 80s” and should have stated “the 80s” as in the 1980s ;)
Description: He made three watches in forty years. That is the entire body of work that made Philippe Dufour the most revered watchmaker alive.
This episode tells the full story: a boy born into the frozen valleys of Swiss Jura who wanted nothing more than to leave, spent years listening to disappointed customers in Frankfurt and the Caribbean, came home, and quietly built a philosophy of craft that the rest of the industry eventually had to reckon with.
We trace the path from his first commission under someone else's name; the grande sonnerie movements he made for Audemars Piguet that went out wearing AP's name and not his ...to the vow he made after that experience, and what he built because of it.
We cover the three watches: the Grande et Petite Sonnerie that put his own name on the map in 1992, the gloriously unnecessary Duality with its twin balance wheels, and the Simplicity, the watch that does almost nothing and says everything. We spend real time on what hand finishing actually means, why Dufour finishes surfaces nobody will ever see, and why that decision is, at its core, a moral one.
If you have ever wondered why a three-handed watch sells for over a million dollars, this is the episode.
Keywords:
Philippe Dufour, Dufour Simplicity, Dufour Duality, Grande Sonnerie, independent watchmaker, Swiss watchmaking, Vallée de Joux, hand finishing, black polishing, anglage, beveling, haute horlogerie, watch podcast, What's on Your Riste, Watchovski, mechanical watches, independent horology, watchmaking philosophy, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Le Sentier, Gaïa Prize, watch collecting, watch enthusiast, finishing craft, tourbillon, small atelier, single watchmaker, watch auction, Phillips auction, Simplicity anniversary