Besançon is not a city often connected with watchmaking history, but there is one very well-known brand that hails from the city, and is over 150 years old. Besançon actually has quite the watchmaking history, with the Observatoire de Besançon being opened in 1880s and being only an hour away from Geneva, with several watch companies having production facilities in the city. The most well-known among these companies, however, LIP, is known for being an important French brand, going back all the way to 1867.
The company was originally founded by Emmanuel Lipmann and called ‘Comptoir Lipmann’ and early on had Swiss suppliers who would provide them with the components necessary to produce pocket watches. By the end of the century, Lipmann’s sons had joined the team and the company was producing thousands of watches per year. Thus, in the early 20th century, LIP turned its focus to in-house production, producing their first movement and eventually also opening their own factory.
Notably, in this period, the company worked with Pierre and Marie Curie who invented radium, and used their new invention to illuminate the dials on their own timepieces – extremely innovative for the time, the first phosphorescent watch dials!
Emmanuel Isaac Lipmann was born to a Jewish family in the fortified city of Neuf Brisach in 1844 near the German border. Upon his death in 1913, his sons took over the business that was now thriving, along with his daughter who worked in administration.
LIP made watches for the military during the First World War and was led mostly by Ernest Lipmann, one of Emmanuel’s sons, immediately afterwards. He set out to rebuild their factory and the company survived the Great Depression, manufacturing tens of thousands of watches by the early 1930s - with over 300 employees! Fred Lippman was rising at the company in this period, which also included the production of LIP’s legendary T18 movement, which was presented to Winston Churchill by the French government in 1948, after the Second World War.
While just a peak at their early history, the brand is still going strong despite its struggles due to the advent of quartz in the period succeeding World War Two and the labour crisis/strikes they faced. As one of the few, and certainly among the most storied brands representing France, LIP is really worth getting to know better.
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