Baume & Mercier: historic brand back on its game
FOR a luxury watch brand with a history dating back to 1830, Baume & Mercier has been maintaining a curiously low profile for the past few years. Or rather had been until 2011, during which it had a bit of a break-out year. Suddenly there were interesting, charismatic pieces appearing again in its collection, and it seemed the historic marque was back on song. Its latest watches, launched in January at the Salon Internationale de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH), build steadily on the strides made last year.
Baume & Mercier sits at the affordable end of the luxury spectrum: with watches ranging from around £1,500 up to £5,500, it is the entry-level brand of the Richemont Group, which owns Cartier, IWC, Piaget and several other prestige brands (SIHH is mostly a Richemont Group enterprise, but not exclusively). Its watches are generally classical in flavour, tastefully designed and very nicely made – fine executive time pieces.
The company started life in the 19th century in the form of a watch shop in the Swiss Jura opened by the watchmaking Baume family – the shop was named Freres Baume. The business grew into one producing high-grade pocket watches that were sold around the world – a “Baume Brothers” branch was opened in London. Shortly after World War One William Baume joined forces with a watchmaker of Russian extraction, Paul Mercier. In the wristwatch age, the company became well-known for its chronographs – mid-20th Century versions are highly collectible.
One of these in fact inspired the stand-out watch of last year’s collection, the Capeland Flyback Chronograph – a beautifully retro piece with a dial full or esoteric detail that was nevertheless crisply legible. This year’s version [pictured left] with a black dial with gold hands and a dark gold inner telemeter ring, is a no less dashing piece of wristwear.
CONTEMPORARY LOOK
The mainstream family of Capeland chronographs have a more contemporary look, and have been sized up to 44mm – a big watch, but not an unwieldy one. The absolute stand-out, for my money, is one with a blue dial [pictured right]. The strikingly bold blue is achieved through electroplating the dial, and the red markings on the black telemeter ring seem to light it up. Hunt this piece down, but not before I do.
The Hampton range is Baume et Mercier’s slightly more formal range of square watches – the pleasure with these things is all in the detail, where they interplay of curves and inner angles of the case, domed sapphire crystal over the dial and lugs works beautifully.