Roy Baierlein is the founder of the Centre Horloger de Provence, located in Entraigues-sur-la Sorgue. A true jack of all trades in micromechanics and a devotee of Time, he welcomes visitors to a one-of-a-kind venue that combines a boutique, a training centre, a private museum, a technical platform and a production site. Between restoring an 18th-century clock, giving a talk on the origins of time and training sales staff from a major watch group, he found a moment to sit down with us so we could get to know the man better. A frank conversation with a watchmaker who never compromises.
On this page
- Biography and personal journey
- Interview with a true enthusiast
- Which watch are you wearing for this interview?
- What is your greatest watchmaking achievement?
- What is your favourite watch complication?
- What other passions do you have besides watchmaking?
- What would be your dream car?
- What is your favourite dish?
- How would you define luxury?
- Which brand (watchmaking or otherwise) best embodies luxury in your view?
- What quality do you most admire in others, and which flaw do you wish you didn’t have?
- Is there a quote you particularly like?
- What time is it?
Biography and personal journey
Roy was born on 5 August 1962 in the American sector of Berlin. A German national, he arrived in France at the age of 6. At 15 he enrolled at the École Nationale d’Horlogerie in Cluses, Haute-Savoie. It was there, a year later, that he met Valérie, who would become his wife and to whom he credits “an immense share of the merit” (his words). He completed numerous internships between 1981 and 1983 before opening a workshop in the centre of Avignon, behind the Palais des Papes. In 1986 the couple opened a boutique alongside the workshop, this time facing the Palais des Papes.
In 2006 they bought the Moulin de Valobre in Entraigues-sur-la-Sorgue, ideally located 8 km from the Avignon Nord exit of the A7 motorway and on the Avignon / Carpentras road. With Avignon’s city centre becoming almost impossible to reach by car, customers were struggling to visit the watchmaking couple. So in 2009, after extensive restoration work that turned the mill into the Centre Horloger de Provence, the business moved to its new home. With nearly 600 m2 of floor space, Roy was able to bring all of his activities under one roof:
4 workshops (watches, clocks and timepieces, manufacturing, design), a boutique carrying around ten watch brands along with straps and accessories, a training centre, and an exhibition of a private collection.
All these activities and this expertise have been recognised three times with the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant (EPV, Living Heritage Company) label, in March 2008, June 2014 and October 2020. Roy was also awarded the title of Maître Artisan en Métier d’Art (Master Craftsman in the Fine Crafts) in December 2013 and the Médaille de la Reconnaissance Artisanale (Craft Recognition Medal) in May 2019.
The Centre Horloger de Provence is also an approved technical training platform for the French Ministry of Labour, providing courses for people returning to work or changing careers.
Interview with a true enthusiast
Which watch are you wearing for this interview?
I’m wearing a steel Eterna type 1935, on a beautiful grey ostrich strap by Camille Fournet.
What is your greatest watchmaking achievement?
Our workshops, because they allow us to bring every kind of timekeeper back to life:
– Early antique horology,
– Verge watches with cocks,
– Pocket watches with or without complications,
– Wristwatches of every brand,
– Clocks of all kinds, including church tower clocks,
– Dashboard instruments,
– Automata,
– Music boxes,
– Barometers…
We also work on prototyping and on making our own watches (in very small series, or even as one-off pieces).
What is your favourite watch complication?
All of them, as long as they are made with passion.
What other passions do you have besides watchmaking?
Far too many!
The one most closely linked to watchmaking is History, with a capital H. More than 1,000 books on horology are piled up on the shelves of my various bookcases. It is an all-consuming passion, so much so that I am now adding to the pile with a few “scribblings” of my own. I am finishing my first book, which follows on from my talk on the history of time. It is due out sometime in 2022.
What would be your dream car?
A Bugatti Type 35.
Its founder, Ettore Bugatti, could have been a watchmaker. After all, wasn’t his motto “Nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive”?
Ettore and his team were forever chasing perfection. He filed more than 1,000 patents, exactly in the spirit of watchmakers: always pushing the limits of mechanics further.
And aren’t Bugatti dashboards perlage-finished, just like so many of our watches? A coincidence?
What is your favourite dish?
Whatever my cardiologist prescribes: willpower!!!
How would you define luxury?
For my part, luxury is in no way tied solely to price or value.
Luxury is the superfluous, often even the useless. Yes, it is expensive, but what does expensive really mean? A huge sum for some is pocket change for others. I find this direct link between luxury and money a shame, all the more so in watchmaking… And it takes something away from the pleasure of wearing the object.
Compare a Rolex, where the tiniest micro-scratch becomes a source of anxiety, with a superb ring that our better halves wear 24/7, gardening and household chores included (no misogyny intended, of course). Our wives simply teach us a lesson by living with it, for the sheer pleasure of it. Isn’t that the greatest luxury of all?
Luxury can also be discovering an object you have coveted for a long time. It then becomes the luxury of owning, or the luxury of making, perhaps of creating too… an endless source of pleasures.
Which brand (watchmaking or otherwise) best embodies luxury in your view?
Breguet, for its history. Daniels, for his knowledge.
Which figure (historical or contemporary) inspires you?
Many people inspire me. Every era has produced torturers, dictators and other madmen. But fortunately, good and evil, black and white, yin and yang have allowed true Men, with a capital M, to emerge in this microcosm we call Earth. The first who comes to mind is the Lion of Panjshir: Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Or, in a completely different field, the great Simone Veil.
What quality do you most admire in others, and which flaw do you wish you didn’t have?
I really value open-mindedness. Without it, nothing is possible!
As for flaws, my main one would be: TESTARD! For our readers “from the North”, meaning anywhere above Montélimar, here is the definition of testard: “A colloquial Provençal word describing someone who is stubborn beyond all reason.”
Is there a quote you particularly like?
The one attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail”.
What time is it?
No idea. Time, as we conceive of it in our hectic lives, holds no interest for me whatsoever.
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