One collector describes the Journe look as "futuristic retro, " and there's something to that.
It's easy to tell a Journe watch at a glance--his pieces don't look like anybody else's.
"Watchmakers spend a lot of time on all fours, " says Journe, who doesn't seem to mind.
Journe boutiques in New York and Beijing, bringing the total around the world to six.
Every one of Journe's new watches starts with his mental image of the dial, not its mechanics.
The JournE Touch is first in a what Toshiba promises will be a family of such products.
Journe moved to Paris and apprenticed with his uncle, who had a business restoring antique clocks and watches.
Journe did the same thing with two autonomous watches humming sympathetically to one another in a 40-millimeter case.
Master watchmaker Richard Mille, who won the award in 2007, wryly suggested they give it to Journe automatically.
On many models a small timekeeping dial is inset on the right side of the face--it's a Journe hallmark.
Around the lobby are scattered the brass watchmaking tools that Journe's predecessors used.
Journe's timepieces often honor the men who employed those tools like 18th-century founding fathers Abraham Louis Breguet and Antide Janvier.
This is Journe's world, crammed with so many tiny details you can almost see the miniature flywheels spinning in his head.
Journe created this lightweight Octa Sport with 120-hour power reserve and a variable inertia balance wheel for stability even at high speed.
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Journe and Panerai on this list of cool watches from the show.
Journe works out of a converted gas lamp factory on the rue de l'Arquebuse in Geneva--he's the only watchmaker in the city center.
Perhaps what most distinguishes Journe is his reverence for the history of time measurement and his sense of his own place in it.
The Centigraphe won Journe a Golden Hand Award in 2008, irritating rivals who must wish that Journe would give someone else a chance.
This was the third time Journe, now 53, had taken the top prize in Geneva's watch Olympics since he opened his own shop, F.
Journe had sold it last year, but now the oil inside was sticking--only a bit, but enough to throw the split-second calibrations slightly off.
Journe was tinkering to see if he could redesign the Centigraphe to work without oil while still protecting the delicate mechanism from wear and tear.
Journe considers himself squarely in their lineage, but he's no antiquarian.
The details Journe really likes are his ideas for new watches.
Call it passion or call it madness, but it's this drive that makes Journe's timepieces so prized by watch collectors, who buy the majority of his pieces.
In a way, Journe's life as a watch designer started with his first tourbillon, a pocket watch version that he completed in 1982 when he was 25.
In 2010, Mr. Journe gave a dinner in Daniels's honor.
WSJ: Watch Making's Self-Taught Genius | Michael Clerizo on George Daniels
But summing up Daniels is done best by Mr. Journe.
WSJ: Watch Making's Self-Taught Genius | Michael Clerizo on George Daniels
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