The house at Le Locle

Le Locle, and why a number instead of a name

Le Locle sits in a valley that has been making watch parts for longer than most countries have held their present borders. The house started here in 1791 and the work never moved anywhere else. A blade ground for a bridge screw is not the blade you take to a case ring, even when the two measure the same across the tip, so every piece leaves us with a reference stamped on it rather than a description printed beside it.

That habit is old and it is practical. A watchmaker buys a handle once and blades many times over. Forty years after the handle first crossed your bench, the number on the shank still finds the spare that fits it.

What sits in the catalogue

There are 232 pieces here across 10 sections of the bench, from case knives and movement holders down to oilers with tips measured in hundredths. Of those, 36 are spares and replacement tips rather than whole tools, kept beside the tool they belong to instead of in a bin of their own.

The sections follow the work, not the shelf. Opening a case, adjusting a balance and fitting hands each want their own drawer, and a tool that serves two of them appears where a watchmaker would look for it first.

What this catalogue is, and what it is not

This is a reference index, not a till. Here you can trace a width, set two lines of blades against each other and read what a pattern was ground for. When you have decided, the button hands you to our retail partner, who holds the stock, takes the payment and packs the box.

We do not see your order and cannot look it up. That is the honest shape of the arrangement and we would rather write it down here than let you find it out on a day when something has gone wrong.