FluxDash

A rare invitation to the workshop of François Junod is a passport to a strange land of exotic birds and beasts, human figures and artworks that come to life in a whir of traditional craftsmanship and mechanical innovation.

Around the workbenches, there are gears, pistons, tools and collections of cameras hanging from the rafters, while porcelain and plaster heads, limbs and torsos are crammed on to every shelf among ever-watchful glass eyes, all ready to aid in the modelling of the figures created by this master of the art of automatons.

Junod’s atelier is in the Jura Mountain village of Sainte-Croix, close to the Swiss-French border. It has been a centre of watchmaking and its associated arts for more than three centuries. But today Junod’s skills are so rare that he is in demand the world over for private commissions or to bring the creative vision of top watchmakers to life. 

Along with his small team, Junod works on five or six sculptures simultaneously. It takes up to five years to finish some pieces, such as the 80cm-high automaton of Alexander Pushkin, which can write 1,458 poems in ink.

Preferring to make his own toys, Junod discovered mechanical figures while at school in the 1970s. The father of a classmate was an automaton maker, and a visit to his workshop opened Junod’s eyes.

‘After school, I studied micro-mechanics as my father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all done before me,’ he says.

‘My great-grandfather built and repaired music boxes for Paillard, and my grandfather worked with phonographs for the high-end audio company Thorens – both in Sainte-Croix. Industries like these have one thing in common with watchmaking – they all work with springs, so it is natural for them all to come together.’

Despite his inherent interest in mechanics, Junod says that there was always something missing for him. ‘So I went to fine arts school in Lausanne to study sculpture, and this opened up a whole new world,’ he says. Three years working with the famed automaton restorer Michel Bertrand followed before Junod founded his own company aged just 23.

With a particular passion for writing automatons that can commit words or drawings to paper via a series of programmed cams, Junod has made pieces for Beijing’s Forbidden City, as well as companies such as William & Son in the UK and watchmaker Jaquet-Droz in Neuchatel. And for the past six years, he has collaborated with Van Cleef & Arpels on its Extraordinary Objects series.

The piece that magicked the partnership to life in 2017 was the Fée Ondine, a bejewelled sleeping fairy atop an enamelled lily pad. On demand, the gentle ripple of the lily pad awakens the fairy, who flaps her wings as the flower opens to reveal a fluttering butterfly. However, automatons have been a part of the maison’s repertoire for a century – the Varuna yacht sculpture, with electric butler’s bell incorporated into the funnel, was made in 1906, and special commissions rarely brought to public view have always been available to clients.

Four more automatons have followed Fée Ondine, including last year’s Fontaine aux Oiseaux, with two singing birds that walk around the water bath on which they perch, and the recently unveiled Eveil du Cyclamen, a bouquet that opens to reveal a diamond, emerald, lapis lazuli and enamel butterfly. Like all of the pieces, it combines a time indication on the base with a spectacular musical automaton inspired by nature, a theme central to Van Cleef & Arpels. The company is reluctant to reveal the price, but Junod has previously said his models can cost £1 million.

‘At the end of the 18th century, writing automatons disappeared and the discs that made them work disappeared too,’ says Junod. ‘Nobody knew how they worked, only that they operate on three axes to move up and down, left and right, backwards and forwards, so I spent two years rediscovering this from scratch. I built a machine to recreate the discs and this was all done manually.’

His current apprentices are between 22 and 26 years old and, according to Junod, are more advanced than he was at their age – no doubt due to his teaching. ‘I am here to explain how to do it, so for the young people in my workshop it is easier than it was for me,’ he says. ‘You can learn mechanics in school, but not automatons.’

Even for a master like Junod, there is always something new to discover, and he credits Van Cleef & Arpels’ jewellery automatons with bringing a new discipline into his professional world. 

‘Nicolas Bos [CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels] had seen my work and came to see me in my workshop and asked, “What can we do together?”,’ he says. ‘Originally everything felt twee and old-fashioned – finding the right idea is one of the hardest things because if you have an automaton that doesn’t mean anything to the maker then it is soulless.

‘So, I went to Paris to look at the archive collection. Among the archives was a water lily. I had previously made a flying carpet that moved like undulating waves and I put these two things together to develop the Fée Ondine. Every piece has to be like this. It should be like a dream that everyone can relate to. My automatons are universal – you don’t need to be a certain age or have a certain level of sophistication to understand them. And, unlike electronic creations, these will work for ever. In a century’s time, anybody will be able to repair and restore them. They are eternal objects.’

The Eveil du Cyclamen took more than 600 hours of work with between five and 10 engineers chipping in. A true collaboration with Van Cleef & Arpels, it was made entirely within the house’s codes. ‘Nature and floral decoration are not my speciality,’ admits Junod. ‘But how the piece moves, that is what I bring to the table. There is a designer for the engine and another for the aesthetic, and the movement infuses the poetic side.’

The jewelled petals and buds are designed in Geneva or Paris with Van Cleef & Arpels’ makers and setters working in Sainte-Croix for the final stages. Prototypes and small maquettes are produced for every component independent of the finished piece to iron out any potential problems. For example, with this year’s Floraison du Nénuphar automaton, which represents the blooming of a flower, the spring delivering the energy to open the petals was too small to allow the heavy gold and enamelled petals to close softly. Unhappy with anything short of perfection, Junod insisted that the entire mechanical system had to be redesigned.

‘We had to look at new robotic innovations to help,’ he says. ‘This is something we are always doing and we keep abreast of all new mechanical techniques and materials. For example, with the Fontaine aux Oiseaux, we needed bellows for the fountain. It is a very traditional system with everything made of glass, except for the piston, which is made in carbon so will never need repairing. We discovered this solution by looking at the shock absorbers inside a photocopier. This made it 40 per cent more efficient, and now I believe we could miniaturise the process to use inside a wristwatch.’

But one piece of tech that Junod draws a line at is computers. ‘In my world, we never ever use computers,’ he says. ‘We use drawings and imagination. It is all about experimentation – a spring here, two springs here, a regulator here. The more animation there is, the more energy is needed. Automatons from the 18th century all had wheels that acted like propellers, and this is not good for a regular speed. We looked to steam engines for the solution – springs with regulators.’

As to why the Extraordinary Objects and Junod’s skills are so popular today, Rainer Bernard, head of research and development for Van Cleef & Arpels timepieces, has an explanation: ‘Maybe they have been forgotten a little bit – in the 17th and 18th centuries there were a lot of them – but making objects like this is very complicated. You need a lot of craft, a lot of knowledge and a lot of patience. These are big, big projects and not everybody wants this challenge or can do it. These objects cannot be mass produced. They are museum-grade pieces.’

While there are very few artists capable of producing work at this level, Junod aims to change this. ‘I am creating a school in Sainte-Croix so I can transmit the knowledge,’ he says. ‘Every student will do something totally different. I have a lot of experience already with my team, teaching them every day while working with them and looking at how to make it as simple as possible.’ 

And one place where Junod’s future students are sure to find work is Van Cleef & Arpels. ‘We will keep on making automatons because we love to do it,’ says Bernard. ‘For us, it offers the perfect blend of craft, creativity and beauty.’ 

Photographs by Christelle Boule

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