Building the Foundation, Part 1: The In-House Movements of Oris Watch Co.
Rome wasn?t built in a day ? and neither was Rolex, Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre and other watch manufacturers praised for their vertical integration and lauded for their array of in-house calibers. While we all applaud the handful of brands that have ramped up their in-house production, either recently or since the beginning, to a capacity that brings new and increasingly complicated calibers to market virtually every year ?your Parmigianis, your Greubel Forseys, your A. Lange & Söhnes, to name just a few ? we also should take note of other brands, many of them smaller, independently owned, or known throughout their history more for outsourcing their movements, that are taking a more incremental approach. In this series of articles, we take a look at five brands ? three Swiss, two German ? that are taking it slow and steady. First up: Oris, which began its new era of movement making with its 110th anniversary. The Oris factory in the Swiss Jura town of Holstein.
Oris, founded in the Jura town of Holstein in 1904, can look back upon a fairly extensive history of watchmaking and movement-making, albeit one that went on a lengthy hiatus in the wake of the Quartz Crisis. Between the year of its founding and 1981, the year in which the company?s management decided to cease producing its own movements in favor of outsourcing ébauches from ETA and later Sellita, Oris developed 229 in-house calibers, including historically significant examples like Caliber 652 in 1968, t...
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