Maison Alcée’s
watch movement
A mechanical watch movement designed and developed exclusively for Maison Alcée – to be assembled by anyone with an interest
A manufacture watch movement
Maison Alcée’s beating heart is the watch movement powering our Persée timepiece.
The fruit of painstaking labours and many years of in-depth research, this mechanical movement has been designed by a team of expert watchmakers exclusively for Maison Alcée to ensure it can be brought to life in the hands of any lover of fine watchmaking.
Our watch movement
Maison Alcée expertise
We’ve produced a watch movement developed in-house just for you to complete and enhance.
Our manufacture mechanical movement has been designed with the help of winner of France’s Meilleur Ouvrier de France ‘best watchmaker’ award Thierry Ducret and Jean-Marie Desgranges; both are horology teachers at the prestigious Morteau college in Jura.
As they pass on watchmaking knowledge, the team’s educational approach allows the next generation to learn all about mechanical watch movements.
Watch designer Antoine Tschumi has added a new aesthetic touch to a timepiece that had come to be seen as rather outdated: the table clock. When positioned vertically, Persée offers a nod to the traditional hourglass; installed horizontally, it sports a more contemporary look. Either way, it’s the perfect addition to your home.
“We need to challenge the belief that some forms of expertise are beyond our reach. Putting these skills in the spotlight is a way of giving them a new lease of life, revealing them to a wider audience so that they can see them in a new light.”
It’s up to you to assemble the mechanical movement in its entirety: only the regulating organ is pre-assembled.
Rather than a clock mechanism, the Maison Alcée movement resembles that of a wristwatch – on a larger scale. This facilitates the assembly process and also makes it easier to understand just how a mechanical watch movement works. Maison Alcée’s timepiece boasts a fourteen-day power reserve, meaning that the movement is hand-wound.
Inveterate collectors, unrepentant enthusiasts and inquisitive newcomers alike can become heirs to ancient arts for a season – and in doing so, experience the pride of having made something with their own hands.
A watch movement in full view
Admire your desk watch clock
The movement is the beating heart of your timepiece. Here it has been skeletonised, putting it in full view so you can be entranced by all the complexity of mechanical art in action.
Most importantly, you’ll be able to understand how the barrel and spring deliver the mechanical energy required by the movement present in any timepiece and observe the process by which this crucial component stores and passes on energy to the rest of the movement.
Each gear, every oscillation and all the tiny interactions of the components are on full display; every time you look at your desk watch clock is thus a genuine learning experience.
“A table clock is a watch with bigger dimensions, the mechanical movement at the heart of both is the same”
Movement characteristics
A baguette watch movement
Designed with you in mind
The baguette movement – so called because the linear layout of the components resembles a French bread stick – is a marvel of horological engineering. This baguette arrangement reveals how each part interacts with the others, with the configuration offering a unique insight into how the various components interact and work together to move the hands in precise fashion.
Maison Alcée’s hand-wound movement thus enables enthusiasts to discover all the complexity of watchmaking mechanics and discuss the workings of the assembly as a whole with others in the community – on a fully informed basis.
Understanding the gear train
On a mechanical desk watch clock movement
The gear train consists in a series of moving gears – in other words, toothed wheels and pinions whose purpose is to transmit energy from the spring barrel to the escapement wheel, increasing rotation speed as they do so.
Each time the speed is geared up, the torque (the rotational force applied to an axis) decreases. In watchmaking, each moving part (consisting of a steel pinion and a brass wheel) has its own name.
On a mechanical wristwatch movement
The gear train of a wristwatch movement is the same as in a desk clock, albeit without the week wheel in most cases, due to the lack of space in the case and the development of the self-winding movement.
Calibers and movements:
what’s the difference?
In watchmaking, the terms ‘caliber’ and ‘movement’ are often used interchangeably. Originally, the word ‘caliber’ referred solely to an object’s dimensions.
Today, in the field of watchmaking ‘caliber’ has come to refer not only to the dimensions of a given component but also the movement of a watch and the meticulous process of designing it.
While ‘caliber’ can thus mean ‘dimension’ with reference to a watchmaking movement, nowadays it can also mean the movement itself, whether mechanical or quartz-powered.
‘Caliber’ may be used in a very general sense to designate an overall watch mechanism including the movement, but some brands also use it more specifically to refer to the movement itself in their documentation, thus demonstrating that it has now become established as a synonym for ‘watch movement’ in everyday language.
The main types of movement to be found in watches are as follows:
- mechanical movements: these may be hand-wound or self-winding, by means of an oscillating weight.
- quartz movements: these have a quartz crystal regulator powered by a battery which serves as their source of energy.
Each of these watch movements embodies a different approach to time and watchmaking expertise.
