The Theology of “In-House”

The modern watch collector does not merely buy a watch. He subscribes to a creed.

There was a time, not so distant, when the phrase “in-house movement” described a manufacturing fact. A company designed and produced its own calibre. The statement carried the same emotional weight as noting that a bakery milled its own flour: interesting, occasionally admirable, fundamentally industrial. Sometime in the early decades of this century, …