The Farm at Le Brassus is dedicated to the most demanding and challenging complications (All photos: Blancpain)
Swiss luxury watch manufacture Blancpain has launched a new webpage that offers the opportunity to virtually visit the company’s workshops in the Vallée de Joux, a rolling countryside secluded in the Jura Mountains known for its long-standing watchmaking tradition.
Accessible via the brand’s website, the virtual tour opens with a panoramic view of the Swiss valley, after which users can choose to explore between the brand's Le Sentier or Le Brassus facilities.
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The rarely-shown Le Sentier workshop — where the majority of employees are located — covers all the principal specialised watchmaking activities, from engineering and quality control to component assembly and final casing-up. It's also where advanced materials such as silicon balance-springs, titanium balance-wheels and Liquidmetal were introduced.
There are a total of seven spaces to explore at the Le Sentier facility, all equipped with a video to illustrate the roles of each work station. A pop-up window describes a specific area in the station further when you mouse over the information buttons dotted across the page.
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Over at the Le Brassus village lies Blancpain’s second workshop, named The Farm, which is dedicated to the most demanding and challenging complications such as minute-repeaters, split-second chronographs, carrousels, tourbillons and ultra-complex calendars.
Here, viewers can visit all three floors and enter different ateliers exclusive to researching, assembling, decorating and engraving prestigious movements. It was at The Farm that the highly complicated 1735, the most complex automatic wristwatch ever produced at the time, came into being in 1991.
Take part in Blancpain’s virtual tour here.
