Blancpain Villeret

Jehan-Jacques Blancpain registered as a watchmaker in Villeret in 1735, which makes Blancpain the oldest name in the industry by registration date. The dial still carries JB 1735.

The claim comes with an asterisk the house is candid about: production stopped during the quartz crisis. The name was dormant until Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet bought it in 1983 and relaunched it on a defiantly contrarian promise — there has never been a quartz Blancpain, and there never will be. In a market then convinced mechanical watchmaking was finished, this proved commercially astute as well as romantic.

The technical high-water mark of the modern era came in 1991 with the 1735 Grande Complication, which combined a tourbillon, perpetual calendar, moon phase, minute repeater, and split-seconds chronograph in one wristwatch.

Blancpain's other lasting contribution is the Fifty Fathoms of 1953, developed with French combat divers and predating the Submariner. It established the vocabulary of the dive watch — rotating bezel, high legibility, real water resistance — and remains the collection most buyers know.

The Swatch Group acquired the brand in 1992. The Villeret line continues the classical side of the house: round cases, double stepped bezels, and complications presented without ornament.