L'Epée 1839
Known today for carriage clocks and sculptural mechanical clocks, L'Epée spent its first century supplying the escapements inside other makers' clocks.
Music boxes in eastern France
Auguste L'Epée, who lived from 1798 to 1875, founded his business in 1839 in Sainte-Suzanne, in the Doubs department of eastern France, to make music boxes. The company says he started it at age 41 together with Pierre-Henri Paur of Geneva, and that its first products were music boxes and other horological items. The regional heritage inventory of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, drawing on research by the historian Jean Lenôtre, also gives 1839 and music boxes.
The escapement specialist
Around 1850 L'Epée began making platform escapements, the self-contained regulating units that sit on top of the movement in alarm clocks and carriage clocks. This became the core of the business. The company says annual output reached 200,000 by 1889, and that it won gold medals at exhibitions in Paris in 1889 and 1900, Vienna in 1892 and Hanoi in 1902. LVMH credits the firm with six gold medals from scientific juries at international exhibitions, along with patents for new escapement designs.
The heritage inventory adds that L'Epée mechanized escapement production in 1909 for cylinder escapements and in 1911 for lever escapements. It sold escapements abroad and to local clockmaking firms including Japy, and in the 1960s it was making synchronized movements for customers such as Kienzle, Siemens and AEG. The inventory records four L'Epée escapements from the 20th century as part of the region's industrial heritage, among them cylinder and side-lever types.
Carriage clocks, Concorde and showpieces
In 1975 new management turned L'Epée toward luxury clocks, especially carriage clocks, according to the company. It says L'Epée supplied the wall clocks fitted in Concorde for its first commercial flights in 1976, and that in 1981 a hundred of its clocks in Hermès leather cases were given to guests at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. LVMH, which lists L'Epée among its houses, notes that its officer's carriage clocks and travel clocks were often given to politicians and members of royal courts.
Since 2014 L'Epée has also made sculptural mechanical clocks with the independent watch brand MB&F, starting with a piece called The Starfleet Machine for its 175th anniversary. The company says the Albatross of 2024 was the fifteenth clock the two have made together. Alongside these, the company says it has developed desk and carriage clocks with complications, designed and produced in-house, since 2009.
The company also lists a run of record and prize-winning pieces. In 1994 its Giant Regulator, 2.20 meters tall and weighing 1.2 tons, entered the Guinness Book of Records. In 2019, its 180th anniversary year, it launched the Time Fast D8 with the ECAL designer Georg Foster, and in 2023 the Time Fast II Chrome won the mechanical clock category at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève.
See also: carriage clocks and the other main clock styles on OnlineClock.app.
From France to Switzerland
The original French firm did not survive in its old form. The Bourgogne-Franche-Comté inventory says the company disappeared around 1995 to 1996. The L'Epée name continues as L'Epée 1839, with movements and cases designed and made in-house at its manufacture in Delémont, in the Swiss canton of Jura. Its site describes L'Epée 1839 as a brand of Swiza SA, and in June 2024 LVMH announced that it had bought Swiza and added L'Epée 1839 to its watch division.
For owners of older pieces, the main thing to know is that much of what L'Epée made before 1975 was never sold under its own name. Its escapements went inside alarm and carriage clocks finished by other firms, so a L'Epée platform may sit in a clock signed by someone else.
Questions people ask
Is L'Epée still in business?
Yes, as L'Epée 1839, which makes clocks in Delémont, Switzerland, and has belonged to the LVMH group since 2024. The original French company in Sainte-Suzanne disappeared in the mid-1990s.
Is L'Epée French or Swiss?
Both, at different times. It was founded in 1839 in Sainte-Suzanne, France, and today designs and makes its clocks in Delémont, Switzerland.