Bruce's World of Watches: LIP

By Bruce Shawkey

LIP watch company has quite an interesting history. The roots of the company go all the way back to

1867 when Emmanuel Isaac Lipmann (right, born 1844, died 1913), established a company selling watchmaking supplies.

In October 1868, he married Caroline Geismar. They had three children: Ernest, the technician, Camille, who assumed the head of a new factory, and Jenny, less involved, was in charge of administration for a while.

In 1904, Ernest Lipmann sought the help Pierre and Marie Curie to find a material that could be read in the dark. Thus, Lip created the first phosphorescent dial.

Frederic "Fred" Samuel Lipmann (right), grandson of Emmanuel and son of Ernest was born in Besançon on November 2, 1905. After a chaotic schooling in Paris, his father put him in the watchmaking school of Besançon. After completing his military service (mandatory in France at that time), he left for the United StLIP ates in 1928 on a study tour where he visited the watchmaking factories and assembly plants of the Harley Davidson and Indian motorcycles. This trip and his passion for motorsport would influence his vision and methods. In August 1931 he joined the family company.

The T18

Produced from 1935 until the end of the 1950s, a LIP T18 was gifted to Sir Winston Churchill (1948) by the French government in recognition of his services France during the Second World War. The classic T18 is still produced today.

Under Fred's direction, LIP became the first watch manufacturer in France. 1954 marks the peak of the company, with 1,500 employees, 300,000 watches a year. Under the leadership of Fred Lip, the company invented the first electric watch, called "Electronic. which is actually part electric, part mechanical. It is presented on March 19th, 1952, a full five years before Hamilton introduced its electric watch. The watch is seen below, pulled from a consumer ad.

Here is a LIP catalog from the mid-1950s

Here are some more pictures of LIP watches:

We jump to the quartz crisis of the 1970s. Fred Lipmann bucks the tide and continues to produce mechanical watches. Always at the forefront, Fred Lip embarks on the adventure of design with Prince François De Baschmakoff. Some designs are shown below:

Next up is the Mythic, maintaining the brand's values: technical and avant-garde.

Next, we'll look at some LIP watches and advertisements through the decades.

T18

Now, here are some vintage advertisements for LIP:

Here is another photo of Frederic "Fred" Samuel Lipmann (above)

Here is a catalog from the mid-1950s:

Since 1984

These excerpts are from an article in the June 1984 issue of Europa Star

Founded in 1867 by Emmanuel Lipmann, Lip is an iconic brand of the French watchmaking industry. As a family business, it proudly flew the Gallic colours until the 1960s, when it was hit hard by the quartz crisis. After the last family member, Fred Lip, was ousted in 1971, the company was taken under self-management by its employees on two occasions (1973 and 1977). It eventually filed for bankruptcy in the 1980s. But with its rich heritage and over 150 years of history, in 2014 Lip found a buyer to revive this jewel of the French watchmaking industry, in its original stronghold in Besancon.

Restoring the reputation of a legendary brand is no easy task. At its peak, Lip was producing 300,000 watches a year, but then the brand vanished from the watchmaking scene. It wasn't until a local family took an interest that Lip was finally reborn. Pierre-Alain Berard has been CEO of the brand since its takeover. A native of Besancon and the son of a watchmaker, the young man saw his father Philippe create the Societe des Montres de Besancon (SMB) in 1978. He says, "Our history and that of Lip coincide. My father created SMB on the arrival of quartz, which destabilized Lip. We do assembly and development, and we subcontract for distribution groups and licensed brands. Personally, I've always seen Lip as part of the horological landscape. When Mr. Bernerd reached out to us to ask if we'd consider buying Lip, he said: 'You have the know-how, you're from Besancon and you understand what a family business is. Taking over Lip's business was a no-brainer for us:' "The foundations were in place for the brand to regain momentum, but we had to start from scratch," Pierre-Alain Berard continues. "Between 1990 and 2000, Lip watches were cheaply made in China and sold in supermarkets. After the buyout, we mothballed the brand to purge the market of these low-quality products."

And the article goes on. Here are images of the Lip watches that accompany the article: