Luxury Lexicon 24 terms
Watchmaking terms
The movements, components and servicing terms used in watchmaking and after-sales work.
A
- Anglage
- Bevelling and polishing the edges of watch movement components to create smooth, reflective borders.
- Automatic watch
- A mechanical watch, with no battery, whose mainspring is wound by a weighted rotor that turns as the wearer moves.
B
- Balance spring
- The fine spring that returns a mechanical watch’s balance wheel toward its resting position and helps determine its oscillation rate.
- Black polishing
- Polishing a metal surface so flat and smooth that it appears mirror-bright or black depending on the viewing angle.
C
- Calibre
- A calibre is a watch movement or the designation used to identify its design.
- Casing-up
- Installing and securing the assembled watch movement, dial and hands inside the case.
- Chronograph
- A watch with a stopwatch function that can start, stop and reset elapsed-time measurement while continuing to tell the time.
- Complication
- An additional watch function or mechanism beyond basic timekeeping, such as a calendar, chronograph or tourbillon.
- Côtes de Genève
- A decorative finish of regular bands applied with an abrasive tool to watch movement surfaces, often plates and bridges.
E
- Engraving
- Cutting a design or lettering into metal or another hard material, by hand with a graver or by machine or laser.
- Escapement
- The mechanism that releases a mechanical watch’s gear train in controlled steps and delivers energy to the balance.
G
H
- Haute horlogerie
- French for fine watchmaking: the upper end of the trade, judged by how movements are made and finished, by design and by service.
- Horology
- The study and practice of measuring time and making timepieces.
M
- Mechanical watch
- A watch powered by a wound spring rather than a battery, its rate set by an oscillating balance wheel and balance spring.
- Métiers d’art
- French for skilled artistic crafts, including disciplines such as embroidery, engraving and decorative metalwork.
- Movement assembly
- Fitting together and lubricating a watch’s internal components so its mechanism can run and be tested.
P
- Perlage
- A decorative finish made by overlapping small circular marks on a watch component with a rotating abrasive tool.
Q
- Quartz watch
- A watch whose rate is regulated electronically by a vibrating quartz crystal, usually powered by a battery.
R
- Regulation
- Adjusting a mechanical watch’s running rate to reduce how much time it gains or loses.
- Rhabilleur
- French for a watch repairer who diagnoses faults and restores watches to working order.
T
- Tourbillon
- A mechanism that rotates the balance and escapement in a cage to average out gravity-related timing errors in vertical positions.
W
- Watchmaker
- A specialist who assembles, adjusts, services or repairs watches and their movements.