News To commemorate 175 years since its foundation, the firm with the famous winged hourglass logo is enlarging its museum and publishing a work devoted to the socioeconomic development of its birthplace, a region to which it has always remained loyal.
For the kick-off of festivities marking the 175th anniversary of Longines, a large presence gathered on 1st March this year in Saint-Imier, where president of the company Walter von Kaenel welcomed journalists from around the world with his customary geniality, together with a number of leading local personalities and Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite, the ambassador of Longines elegance. It was a red letter day for the Swatch Group subsidiary, which inaugurated two new rooms in its museum and presented an historical work to mark the occasion.
The Longines Museum is living testimony to the watchmaking tradition of the brand with the winged hourglass. To celebrate the company’s 175th anniversary, two new rooms have been opened to add value to this precious heritage. The 1957-2007 space traces the last fifty years of watchmaking at Longines. Among the hundreds of models on display, the Longines Flagship (1957) and the L990 (1977) - the last automatic calibre manufactured - but also the Longines DolceVita (1997) and Longines Evidenza (2003), more recent successes for the brand, are milestones in this impressive retrospective. In the adjacent exhibition room no less than 800 établissage books reveal all the secrets of the 15 million watches produced by Longines before the IT revolution. This well-stocked library includes books of invoices from the 19th century, some specimens of which are on display. Thus the fortunate owner of a pocket watch from 1867 will be able to trace the name of the watchmaker who checked the rate of his timepiece at that time.
For its side, the room with company advertising posters offers a trip into the world of publicity. From the end of the 19th century to modern times, visitors can follow the evolution in advertisements that have best illustrated the winged hourglass brand. Around fifty panels trace a history of Longines advertising, with the first engravings showing the factory to its best advantage and the medals it won, up to the “Elegance is an Attitude” campaign, via posters by major designers in the early 20th century or the early advertisements which associated the watch with distinguished ambassadors.
The anniversary celebrated by Longines in 2007 is an important event which should, as was the intent of Walter von Känel, president of Longines, “be remembered for years to come, by, among other things, the publication of a book tracing the economic and social history of the region”. Longines thus assigned Laurence Marti, a sociologist and historian, the task of writing a work which analyses the development of crafts and industry in the valley of Saint-Imier and the surrounding area. This produced a book entitled “A Region in Time”, covering the period 1700-2007. Although this account covers more than watchmaking and Saint-Imier, it does however underline the importance of watchmaking for the region and reminds us how, among the historic producers, Longines is the only company, still in operation, which was born, grew up and reached maturity in Saint-Imier. This work, with its abundant illustrations, aims at being accessible to the major public. Longines made all efforts for this book to mark not only its own history but also, more generally, that of the region by telling a story which to date was little known. With 3,000 copies printed, the book is available in both French and English.
March 15, 2007
