Swiss/French watchmaking craft now on UNESCO:s world heritage list
As early as 1972 UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) established the World Heritage List. It is a list of phenomena around the world that on various grounds are considered worth protecting for future generations. Eqotime’s Hans Persson tells us more about how UNESCO has now chosen to protect the art of watchmaking.
Text: Hans Persson
Already in 1972 UNESCO (the United Nations organisation for education, science and culture) instituted the world heritage list. It is a list of phenomena all over the world that on various grounds are considered worth protecting for future generations. From the start the list largely consisted of different buildings. But with since 2003 there is also the category “intangible cultural heritage”. Counted into that are among other things ancient crafts, traditional forms of music and other old customs. UNESCO annually announces a number of additions to this list.
As early as 2009 watchmaking was in a way included. Then in the form of, somewhat diffusely put, the town planning in La Chaux-de-Fonds/Le Locle. With an extremely determined town planning at the end of the 1800s that was entirely aimed at supplying the industry around watchmaking with suitable premises and housing, even Karl Marx was impressed. For example he mentions La Chaux-de-Fonds in “Das Kapital” and describes it as an efficient industrial town.
Tough criteria
In 2012 Switzerland put together a list of 167 different areas that they thought deserved a place on the world heritage list. And by 2014 it had boiled down to 8 areas that got a formal application sent to UNESCO. To apply for world heritage status is a rather complicated process. Among other things a clear and well defined description of what it is you want to get included is required. Usually it takes a few attempts before you manage an application that meets the criteria for the list.
In this case France also got in on a corner since the final application that was submitted in 2019 was about cross-border watchmaking. And on Wednesday UNESCO announced that “The craftmanship of Swiss and French mechanical watchmaking” is now on the world heritage list.
Getting onto the world heritage list ”highlights a living and symbolic tradition in the French-Swiss Jura region”, said the Swiss ministry of culture in a statement. And the inscription on the list is about “skills related to artisanal mechanical watchmaking and art mechanics, which are used to create watches and other objects designed to measure and indicate time”.
Automatons, music boxes & mechanical songbirds
In line with the craft focus the manufacture of “automatons, music boxes and mechanical songbirds” is also included. I did not know that mechanical songbirds were a thing. But after having read this news I still get a bit of a craving for one.
That watchmaking is taken up as a cultural expression worth protecting of course feels good in a watch enthusiast’s heart. Hopefully it makes more people open their eyes to the craft dimension of mechanical watches. In Switzerland almost 60 000 people work in the watch industry and this news puts focus on the work they carry out. Both as manufacturers and distributors of watches. But perhaps most of all on their work with maintaining a really fine craft tradition.
