Architecture & Design
Bulgari Mixes Industry with Art at Its Newly Renovated Manufacture d’Habillage de Saignelégier
Métiers d’art and industrial technology work hand-in-hand at Bulgari’s newly expanded and renovated Saignelégier manufacture.
By Laurie Kahle
Contributor
Watchmaking’s ancient decorative handcrafts are having a moment at Bulgari, which has officially opened its newly renovated and expanded Manufacture d’Habillage in Saignelégier, Switzerland, featuring a new métiers d’art workshop as part of a comprehensive makeover.
At last week’s unveiling, Frédéric Arnault, LVMH’s CEO of Watches, and Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin, who underscores the brand’s independence within the French powerhouse, celebrated 25 years of LVMH watchmaking in Switzerland.
The goal of the 18-month project was to significantly strengthen the brand’s integrated manufacturing strategy while cultivating the culture of metiers d’art mastery needed to satisfy consumer demand for some of its popular models with artistic dials.
Growth Phase
Nestled in the Jura Mountains, Bulgari’s Saignelégier facility added a new floor, growing the space from 36,600 square feet to more than 47,000 square feet, sprawling across three levels. The expansion allowed the brand to bring its case and dial production under one roof, leveraging the power of vertical integration.
The Saignelégier Manufacture is now equipped with a range of large-scale production machines organized into workshops capable of fulfilling both small and medium production runs. Existing spaces were redesigned to improve workflow and encourage the exchange of ideas with the goal of raising the bar in terms of overall production quality.
Balancing the yin of increased industrial capacity with state-of-the-art machinery is the yang of old-world, labor-intensive métiers d’art practiced in a new workshop dedicated to “Artmanship” at the heart of the manufacture.
State of the Arts
The Métiers d’Art workshop is devoted to the crafts of hardstone marquetry, peacock feather marquetry, gem-setting, and micro-painting – métiers that distinguish the dials of the brand’s popular Serpenti, Octo Finissimo, and Bvlgari Bvlgari collections, as well as high-jewelry watches. Importantly, this airy, contemporary space provides artisans with an atmosphere of silence and calm in which they can explore their creativity.
Such a serene work environment is essential for the painstaking work required to make the métiers d’art dials for pieces such as this year’s Lucea with a marquetry dial made of shards of lustrous green malachite and four new seasonally-inspired, limited-edition Serpentis in collaboration with Japanese architect Tadao Ando featuring marquetry dials assembled from fragments of green aventurine, tiger’s eye, and pink or white mother-of-pearl.
Peacock feather marquetry is one of the more exotic decorative crafts practiced by the brand. In 2019, it unveiled the Divas’ Dream Peacock watch featuring a dial covered with pieces of peacock feather.
Two years later, the limited edition Divas’ Dream Peacock Dischi debuted and featured an unconventional time display using two rotating discs. First, a spinning central disc is affixed with a brilliant-cut diamond to indicate the hour, while a rotating outer disc carries a pear-cut diamond to display the minutes.
Most importantly, at least for our purposes, the Dischi’s two-part dial is also adorned with 24 hand-cut feather elements using the ancient inlay technique of feather marquetry that was popular in Renaissance Italy and revived by Bulgari in the 1970s.
Next Level
As Bulgari seeks to satisfy growing enthusiasm for the brand by investing in cutting-edge industrial equipment and expanding its capacity for high-end case manufacturing, its commitment to métiers d’art demonstrate that artfulness remains at the heart of its mission.
And while the upgraded facility has its corporate goals of modernized production, interdisciplinary collaboration, and multiskilled training programs, it has not eschewed the human side with optimal safety measures and amenities to enhance the well-being of its 130 employees.
To those ends, the new floor houses a staff restaurant, an outdoor terrace, and new wellness and recreation areas. The roof, façade, and parking areas have been redesigned for solar power generation (816 solar panels supply 25% of the building’s energy needs). Meanwhile, redesigned workflows reduce electricity consumption, which helps Bulgari meet LVMH’s sustainability requirements.
The comprehensive renovation and expansion project was fueled by LVMH’s investment of more than CHF 500 million in the past five years, benefitting 15 Swiss manufacturing sites representing ten brands. And there’s more in the pipeline. To see more of the Bulgari catalog, check out the brand’s website.
(All images by Bvlgari)