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In mid August 2011, Gregg Perry was an invited guest to the Parisian Horological studio of Philippe Prutner. The visit included a tour of the machine room as well as the clock and watch laboratory. Prutner’s machines and tools are all Swiss or German made, and although while being over 20 years old, they appear to be right out of the box due to the gentle attention of their caretaker.
M. Prutner is a 3rd generation clock and watchmaker. He is venerated by all of his peers as the leading Horolgical Conservationist/Astronomical instrument maker in the Republic Français. His atelier is impeccable; organization, layout and machinery maintenance, the finest I have ever seen. He utilizes six watchmakers beneath with 4-6 clocks or watches being time-out on each. He prefers to work only on the upper end of the horological scale, and one will find only the finest French precision regulators, marine chronometers and monumental clock mechanisms on his benches. In addition to these, he is known throughout Europe as the Expert of astronomical, nautical and scientific instruments and spheres.
He graduated from the prestigious College d’Enseignment Industrie/Horloger de Paris (CEIHE), well before the era of quartz and information technology.
He thus benefited from traditional training in techniques which have changed little since the early 19th century. This provided him with the expertise to resolve all restoration issues by traditional methods, using metals as identical as possible in recipe to those used in the past. Certain modern machine tools used judiciously can sometimes be of great assistance, but others, such as ultrasonic cleaning baths are highly damaging (stress corrosion cracking) and are forbidden in Prutner’s atelier. Since 1970 he has worked on great horological masterpieces from throughout Europe, the French government (Versailles, Fountain Bleu etc.) and great collections throughout the world. He completed a long-tern project in 2002 “Spheres, the Art of Celestial Mechanics”, which is the largest collection of brass sphere instruments in the world.
He is the member of Chambre National des Experts Spécialisés (CNSE), National Chamber of Specialized Experts and also a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (The Order of Art and Letters, which is a honorary French decoration who is managed by the Ministry of Culture).
He worked at the exhibition of “Spheres, the Art of Celestial Mechanics “ in 2002.
He achieved the supreme title of Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant (EPV) and he twice received the SEMA (Institut National des Métiers d’ Art) award.
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