BACK TO BASICS

Raw, uncompromised, stripped back it's a formula that works for watches too

- Richard Holt

Driving a skeleton car has very obvious pros and cons, as any Ariel Atom owner will tell you. It saves weight and looks cool. But it's also noisy and lets in all of the weather. Skeletonising a watch does not come with these disadvantages, but the process of stripping it back to the essentials has long been a great challenge.

The reason for early skeleton clocks was simple. Nowadays if you want to let people know how well business is going, you can buy a Bugatti. Around 200 years ago a good way of making people jealous was a fancy clock. Just owning one set you apart from the masses, but clockmakers, looking for new ways to stand out, hit upon the idea of stripping away the metal casing so you could admire the gears and springs at work.

Pocket watches were also given the skeleton treatment - the most famous is a masterpiece made by Abraham-Louis Breguet for Marie Antoinette. It was commissioned in 1783 by an unknown admirer of the young queen, with a fully skeletonised movement boasting 823 tiny components. It was so intricate that 10 years later, with the French Revolution in full swing, the queen was executed before she eve got to see it. Breguet, as a friend of the royal court, was himself lucky to escape the guillotine. He survived until the age of 76, but died before the watch was finished. It was finally completed by Breguet's son, more than 40 years after it was ordered.