the history of Vaucher watchmakers

Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
The Vauchers watch-makers
orginating form Fleurier
The Vaucher families, who were deeply involved in the introduction and development of the
small-scale watch industry in Fleurier, that is to say in the manufacture of pocket watches as
opposed to clocks, little by little deliver up to us the forgotten details of their traditions,
their know-how and their everyday life. At the time of the 1750 census, there were 28
Vaucher families in Fleurier. Although they shared a common ancestor, these families do
not regard themselves as closely related, and mark the difference between them by adding
a marriage or place name as in «Vaucher Sur-Les-Moulins», «Vaucher du Guilleri», «Vaucherde-la-Croix» or»Vaucher-Ferrier».
Watches engraved with The Vaucher signature and bearing witness to the presence of
Vaucher watch makers in Fleurier, Geneva, London and Paris as from the xviii century occasionally crop up in museum or private collections during auctions.
Complication watches, automats, richly-decorated cases especially made for aristocratic
customers and, subsequently, watches for the Chinese market, all have the origin of the
artists who created them in common.
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher
known as Vaucher du Guilleri
(1712-1786) first watch-maker
in Fleurier
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher is reputed, in 1730, to have been the first watch maker
in Fleurier.
An official deed of 1732 makes mention of a Jean Jacques Vaucher Watch Maker mentioned
as witness with his brother, Daniel-Henri, an architect. There is no trace of the Master of
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri; could it have been Daniel Jeanrichard or one of his pupils as is
often mentioned? We have no idea but the second assumption seems plausible.
Between 1730 and the end of the xviii century, watch making spread rapidly in the Neuchâtel Mountains. David Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher trained Jonas DuPasquier who, in turn,
was to train Claude-Jean-Jacques Jequier.
A few years later, several young people came from the Vaud Region and the Vallée de Joux to
enter apprenticeship in Fleurier in order to escape the all-too-restrictive rules imposed in
their native regions by the craft guilds. So it was that the development of the watch industry in the Vallée de Joux since 1740 results directly from Fleurier becoming an important
watch making centre around the middle of the xviii century.
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
01
The family of David-Jean-Jacques Henri Vaucher is well-known thanks to a diary fortuitously
discovered about thirty years ago during a wastepaper collection in Fleurier and which had
been written by his father, Daniel Vaucher, a carpenter.
As was the case with many craftsmen from the Val-de-Travers who were working in the
building trade, and probably as his father was already a carpenter, Daniel Vaucher, born
in 1666, spent long periods away from home. He was involved in the construction of many
buildings throughout the Vaud Region, right down to the shores of Lake Geneva.
This explains why David-Jean-Jacques-Henri was on baptized in Vuillerens on 9 April 1713,
which would lead us to believe that all the family was involved in these seasonal migrations.
In 1740, Daniel Vaucher, a farmer and stockbreeder in Fleurier, a carpenter and the owner of mills in Buttes with his brother-in-law, Abraham DuPasquier, and at Romainmôtier,
bought the citizenship of Neuchâtel for himself and his children.
The year his son was born, Daniel Vaucher built the family house in Fleurier at a place
called Guilleri, his initials, FD, as well as the date, 1712, are still visible on the door lintel. This branch of the Vaucher family of Fleurier was thereafter to be named Vaucher du
Guilleri.
The bonds between the Vaucher du Guilleri family and the Vaud District were to continue
with the following generation. Daniel-Henri, the elder son of Daniel, became an architect
for LLEE of Bern, and was involved in the construction of many public buildings. DavidJean-Jacques-Henri’s first wife was Anne-Marie Croisier known as “Nanest”, who probably
originated from the area of Bière or Morges.
Watch-making in Fleurier in the
second half of the XVIII century
The first Vaucher Frères company
The Neuchâtel population census conducted in 1750, entitled “Enumeration of the people,
the poor, and the others”, informs us that Fleurier at that time had 459 inhabitants, of
whom 103 were called Vaucher.
The majority of the active people were involved in agriculture and building, and the craft
industries catered to the immediate needs of the community, such as tailors, hatters, blacksmiths or cobblers.
There were already 15 people plying the cottage trade of clock and watch maker in addition
to agriculture and stock breeding.
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher, who was reputed to excel in this art, was a complete
watch maker, manufacturing all the parts of the watch himself.
It was under his inf luence and thanks to the people whom he initiated that the watch
industry developed in Fleurier as from the mid- xviii century.
David-Jean-Jacques-Henri Vaucher had five sons, the eldest, Isaac-Henri, already mentioned
as a watch maker, died at the age of 20. Three of his other sons: Claude-Jean-Pierre, JeanJacques-Henri and Henry-Louis were to continue the family business by creating their company, Vaucher frères, towards the end of the xviii century.
Vaucher Frères were manufacturers and traders. They produced watches of beautiful quality, often with complications, as well as travelling clocks. In Fleurier, watch making continued to progress, involving 131 people in 1790.
To meet the considerable demand and to rationalise production, individual craftsmen specialised in the manufacture of the various parts of the watch. Assemblers and traders assembled and sold them.
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
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Applications for passports in the names of the Vaucher brothers indicate to us that this
market covered almost all of Europe and that each one of them dealt with a precise area Germany, Italy, France.
Their success was total as the Fleurier Town Clerk in 1856 declared that “they have reached
a position of undoubtedly rare fortune such as is given to few people to attain”.
The Vauchers du Guilleri, over the generations, married members of the DuPasquier family,
the founders of the Fabrique-Neuve producing Cortaillod painted fabrics considered one of
the major European copanies of its time in this industry.
These renewed family ties undoubtedly furthered the commercial rise of the watch making
company.
Unlike his brothers, David-Jean-Jacques-Henri, Vaucher’s fifth son, Charles-Daniel, born in
1760, did not become a watch maker but a priest in St-Aubin and then in Lignières of which
he conducted an historical study still known today. He spent his last years in Fleurier.
Daniel Vaucher of Fleurier,
master watch-maker in Paris
under the name of Vaucher
in the city
Daniel Vaucher, born in 1716, son of François, comes from another Vaucher family, of
which the members are distinguished more particularly in administration and finance.
His father, a church elder and administrator of justice, exercised the function of collector
for Neuchâtel families with assets in the Val-de-Travers. One of his brothers, Pierre-François,
was a notary (solicitor) and administrator of justice; whereas the other, Jean-Jacques, combined the functions of governor, administrator of justice and elder. He, in 1748, was to have
a son, Jean-Jacques-François Vaucher, known as Vaucher-le-Riche because of the immense
fortune he made in the printed calico trade of the Cortaillod Fabrique-neuve.
However, in circumstances which are none too clear, and involving a matter of counterfeit
banknotes, Daniel Vaucher, captain and administrator of justice, had to leave Fleurier for
Paris in 1760, leaving his wife and six children behind.
In the archives of his country of origin, he is mentioned as a terrinier, that is to say a
manufacturer of earthenware stoves, but he popped up in Paris in 1767, as a master watch
maker, residing in Rue de Pré-aux-Bœufs, where he became a highly esteemed craftsman.
In Paris, Daniel Vaucher probably had contacts with Ferdinand Berthoud and other expatriates from Val-de-Travers. Might it have been thanks to them that he became a watch maker?
He and his children, Jonas-Frederic, Jean-Henri-David, François, Jean-Jacques and Samuel,
who went to join him, produced some splendid watches under the Vaucher in the City name.
His elder daughter, Isabelle-Salome, was also a watch maker.
Seven of their watches are still preserved in the Louvre, and others in several museums
around Europe.
As Daniel Vaucher worked for wealthy aristocratic customers, he was also involved in the
famous business of the Queen’s necklace.
The date of his death is unknown, but his sons continued the family business under the
style Frères Vaucher and they had serious difficulties at the time of the Revolution.
Jean-Henri-David returned to Switzerland around 1792, where he married a young lady
called Bovet d’Areuse and died a little later.
We know, from a very touching letter, that Samuel and François were still in Paris in the City in
1826. Having been reduced to poverty and being almost blind, they lived on the pension they
received from their cousins Dubois, Bovet and Vaucher who had remained in Switzerland.
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
03
The Vauchers known as Clercs alias
Vaucher architects in Geneva
Before watch making came into its own, the people of the Val-de-Travers did seasonal work
as stone cutters, carpenters or masons on the Swiss Lowlands. People from Fleurier who
were to be found in Geneva, almost all worked in the building trade. Some had settled permanently in this city and some became recognised architects.
That was the case of Jean-Jacques-Frederic Vaucher-Ferrier, born in 1766 in Fleurier, who
was accepted as an inhabitant of Geneva in 1785 in the capacity of mason. The Municipality
of Fleurier called upon him and another Fleurier exile from Geneva, Pierre-Louis Lequin,
to enlarge the temple planned in 1822. The façade plans of this project remain to this day,
preserved at the Val-de-Travers Museum.
Curiously, these drawings carry the signature of Vaucher-Strubing, a well-known enamel
painter and first cousin of Jean Jacques-Frederic.
Samuel Vaucher, nephew of Jean Jacques-Frederic, born in 1798, was the designer of many
significant buildings among which the Rath Museum in Geneva and several public buildings in Marseilles, whereas his first cousin, François-Ulrich Vaucher, planned most of the
Bergues district.
All are descendants of Balthasar Vaucher known as Clerc alias Vaucher. The Vaucher families of Geneva kept close links with Fleurier. It was not rare that their children took their
first communion there, often at Christmas, two brothers and sisters together. Likewise,
Jean-Jacques Vaucher, A stone mason living in Geneva, and his wife, Charlotte Fatton, are
mentioned as godfather and godmother to three children in Les Verrières and in Môtiers
between 1775 and 1778.
The Watch making Vauchers
in Geneva
In 1724, Daniel Vaucher of Fleurier, son of Antoine, and a mason by trade, was accepted as
an inhabitant of Geneva. He had already been living there since 1719 and had 12 children.
In 1748 and 1754 respectively, his sons, Daniel and Pierre-François, both watch makers,
were also accepted as inhabitants. It is known that they served their apprenticeship in
Geneva. A third son, Abraham, was accepted in 1757; he was an enamel painter and master
jeweller, whereas one of his daughters, Jeanne-Marguerite, married Jean-Jacques Jequier, a
well-known watch maker in Fleurier.
Was it Daniel and Pierre-François who founded the house of Vaucher Frères in Geneva to
which are attributed, among other items of very good quality, the fantasy watches known
as “arm in the air”?
If that was so, they had descendants to carry on the business because they both died before
1800. Thorough research remains to be done into the Geneva business. However, the coincidence of the products and the times prompts us to think that there are close links between
this company and the Vaucher Frères company of Fleurier.
Charles-Ferdinant Vaucher Watch
assembler and dealer in Fleurier
at the end of the xviii Century
Among the watch-assemblers in Fleurier at the end of the xviii century and contemporaries
of the Vaucher Brothers, mention should be made of Charles-Ferdinand Vaucher (17641847), son of the watch maker, Jean-Jacques-François Vaucher.
Of him it is known that he set up in business in the house that currently serves as the Post
Office. A portrait preserved at Môtiers Museum shows him holding in his hand a letter
from Paris, indicating that he sold watches there just as did his father-in-law, Jean-JacquesHenri Berthoud, and his brother-in-law, Jonas, whose business, Berthoud Father and Son,
was installed in the court of the Sainte-Chapelle.
At that time, the watch-assembly system made it possible to provide many small specialised
workshops, each specialising in one component of a watch, with a livelihood. The assemblers assemble the parts of the watch and entrusted the finished products to the traders
who knew the markets well.
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
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We have not found any watches signed by Charles-Ferdinand Vaucher, and there is no precise indication that permits us to attribute to him those bearing the signature Vaucher or
Vaucher au Val-de-Travers. It is, nevertheless, thought that this watch making company was
of a certain importance at the time.
The son of Charles-Ferdinand, Charles-Henri, born in 1793, was later to open a shop in London and he played a considerable role in the introduction of the manufacture of Chinese
watches to Fleurier.
The crisis of the early XIX century
and the search for outlets abroad
At the beginning of the xix century, Napoleon’s protectionist policy and the unstable situation in Europe put an end to the prosperity of the Neuchâtel watch industry. Many watch
makers gave up the trade, turned to other activities or left the country. Some had to resort
to smuggling to export their products.
Others persisted, diversified their trade and went to seek out more far-f lung markets. That
was the case with the Bovet brothers and Charles-Henri Vaucher who expatriated himself
to England.
XIX Century the Vaucher du Guilleri
3rd generation of watch-makers
After the arrival of his first child in Thun when he was only 16 years old, George-Alfred
Vaucher (1795- 1840), son of the priest, Charles-Daniel and grandson of David-Jean-JacquesHenri Vaucher Du Guilleri, founded the Vaucher Neveu watch company.
It specialised in trade with Italy, the gateway to the Near East, and it also imported olive oil .
It was Georges-Alfred Vaucher who, probably before 1830, had the house in the Rue du Temple, the current head office of Parmigiani Fleurier, built. His wife, Louise Lohner, who was
to succeed him at the head of the company for three years, was to give him 8 more children.
Claude-Jean-Pierre Vaucher Du Guilleri’s two sons, Claude-Henri (I795 -?) and César-Arnold
(1798-1876) continued the assembly of watches. We do not know how long they kept the
corporate style Vaucher Frères.
In a report, published in 1873, on the beginnings of watch making in Fleurier, César-Arnold
Vaucher claims that about 1820, he introduced the frequency of the balance at 18,000
oscillations an hour, a technical innovation which was quickly to spread. Was it because
of this invention, or the inheritance left to him by his parents and grandparents, that he
accumulated his very considerable fortune?
He was a committed republican, and is recognised as having been jointly responsible for
the damage done to Neuchâtel Castle during the uprising of 1831.
The rise of the Chinese watch
Edouard Bovet William Ilbery
and Charles-Henri Vaucher
The Bovet brothers - Frederic, Alphonse and Edouard – who were contemporaries of
George-Alfred Vaucher and his cousins, in 1815, set out to open a watch business in London. In 1818, Edouard (1797-1849) left for Canton, engaged by a London company. After two
years, with his brothers established in London and his brother Gustave who had remained
in Fleurier, he founded a company with a view to developing the trade in watches with
China,
Thanks to the immense market that it was to open, this company was again, as from the
second quarter of the xix century, to give a formidable boost to watch-making production
in Fleurier
The assembly of the Chinese calibres occupied a great number of workshops throughout
the area and in Geneva for the enamelled boxes.
Generally sold in pairs in a single case, these good quality, simple or top-of-the-range watches can be identified by their visible engraved or mirror-polished steel movement. They are
made on the model of those created by a famous London watch maker, William Ilbéry.
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
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It is known that, just as Bovet, Charles-Henri Vaucher had settled in London about 1820.
The precise date of his return to Fleurier is uncertain.
Two volumes of his business correspondence, covering the period 1834-1838, are preserved
in the archives of the Canton of Neuchâtel. From this, we learn that he assembled Chinese
watches for William llbéry, whose son or nephew was serving his watch making apprenticeship in Fleurier. Charles-Henri Vaucher spent half the year living in London where he
indulged in the tools and iron trade. He also imported textiles from England. “Never before
in human memory can it be recalled when business went so well”, he wrote in 1834 to justify a delay in the delivery of 18 pairs of watches ordered by llbéry.
In 1838, Louis Bovet, the nephew of Edouard Bovet, wrote to his uncle: “A quantity of watches
have arrived from Vaucher, enamelled as well as others”,
These watches were those of Charles-Henri Vaucher but it does not say who was charged
with selling them, nor for how long this trade lasted.
Trade with China the Vaucher Frères
company founded in 1843
In the wake of Bovet, and given such a f lourishing market, other Val-de-Travers watch
making companies were established in China. Such was the case, inter alia, of the Dimier
Frères, the Juvet company and Vaucher Frères since 1843.
Alfred-Louis (1817-1880), Edouard-Auguste, (1819-1847), James-Henri (1824-1871), FredericHenri known as Fritz (1827-1913) and Albert-Emile (1833-1888), are the five sons of GeorgeAlfred Vaucher who traded in watches under the name of Vaucher Neveu.
The Vaucher Brothers, who settled in Fleurier, where they had a shop in the family house
in Rue du Temple, and in Canton and Shanghai in China, devoted themselves to trading in
watches, mu-sical boxes, olive oil, tea and Chinese objects, from 1843 to 1866, when they
finally had to go into liquidation. Throughout their activity, authenticated deeds giving proxy rights to merchants in Milan,
Venice and Leghorn, indicate that they had not given up the Italian market formerly held
by Vaucher Neveu.
In 1856, James Vaucher appointed Emile Dubois, a trader in Naples, as his agent to collect
debts in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilys.
At 28 years of age, Edouard Vaucher was murdered by pirates when he set out to go to
Hong-Kong then on to Shanghai, carrying with him approximately 40’ 000 francsworth of
Swiss watches.
That did not prevent his brothers from continuing their trade with China where living
conditions became increasingly dangerous for foreigners because of political unrest. Just
before the company went bankrupt, Albert, the youngest separated from his brothers, in
1863, and set up for his own account in Hong-Kong, where he spent his last years.
The few beautiful Chinese gold, enamel and pearl watches signed Vaucher Fleurier, so characteristic for their polished steel movement, which have come down to us, must be of their
manufacture.
The Vaucher watch-makers in the
xx century
With the beginning of the xx century, watch making systems changed considerably.
Assembly gave way to factories.
Fleurier became a small industrial centre thanks to several significant companies such as
Fleurier Watch, Universo S.A. and the Ebauches Factory. From 1851 to 1985 - intermittently
because of the periods of crisis - the Watch making School made it possible to continue the
acquisition of know-how.
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
06
We cannot here list all the VaucherS originating from Fleurier who have played a role in
the development of the Swiss watch industry, but during the xx century, we must nevertheless mention:
Charles-Alcide Vaucher (1860-1924), founder of the Recta Watch Factory in Bienne,
one of his sons, Maurice Vaucher, was initially a priest before he turned to managing
the Recta and became Chairman of the Watchmakers Federation from 1933 to 1957.
Edouard-André Vaucher, founder of the balance factory at Evilard and his son, Werner
Alfred, who directed the Swiss Balance Factory in Sagne and, in 1932, became the
first Manager of the United Balance Factories whose central office was in Bienne. His
son, Hugues, was also the Manager from 1960.
Frank Vaucher, a highly skilled adjuster with the Longines chronometry service.
Vaucher Factory Fleurier
in the XX century
The stakes today not being what they were in the past, Vaucher Factory Fleurier has equipped
itself with the means to ensure the development and manufacture of the quasi-totality of
the components necessary for both the movement and the casing of the watch, thus aiming
for maximum independence.
The tradition of very high-quality finishes and aesthetics must be combined with the technical innovation of the mechanisms and research into new materials.
Vaucher Factory Fleurier
in the XXI century
Vaucher Factory Fleurier with Bruno Affolter, Atokalpa and Elwin, constitutes a watch making centre. This centre of excellence, created in the xxi century, is entirely devoted to the
manufacture of top-of-the-range watches, fully concentrating on excellence and innovation, in its human resources, its methods and its equipment.
Furthermore, the single parts workshop caters to the wishes of customers who are lovers
of complicated watches and prestige objects. Its watch makers, craftsmen and decorators
contribute to the great value of the products offered by this Fleurier-based factory.
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
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Acknowledgments
The authors would especially like to thank the following for their kind contribution,
particularly in the retrieval of iconographic documents,
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Anne Baezner and Fabienne-X. Sturm
Watch and Enamels Museum, Geneva.
Pierre Buser Gerard Vouga, Marlène Rufenacht,
Château des Monts Clock and Watch Museum, Le Locle.
Nicole Bosshart, Jean-Michel Piguet, Philippe Pellaton, Daniel Curtit,
International Clock and Watch Museum and the Institute of Man and Time,
La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Estelle Fallet, La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Antoine Simonin, Neuchâtel.
Bernard Cousin, Fleurier.
Pierre-Andre Delachaux, Môtiers.
Hugues Vaucher, Évilard.
Anne-Marie Klauser, Fleurier
We also thank the archivists and documentalists of the following institutions:
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Neuchâtel Cantonal Archives.
Geneva Cantonal Archives.
Geneva Art and History Museum.
Geneva Iconography Centre.
Neuchâtel Public and University Library.
Lausanne Historical Museum.
Zurich and Seewen National Museum.
Centredoc, Neuchâtel.
COMPILATION
Research: Laurence Vaucher, Paul Clementi.
Texts: Laurence Vaucher.
Fleurier. November 2003
Vaucher Manufacture Fleurier
A 250 years long history
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