The Restoration Of The Double-Barrel Pistol And Its Songbird By Parmigiani Fleurier
Michel Parmigiani belongs to the intimate circle of watchmakers that is today able to restore super complex, vintage micro mechanical creations. Together with a few other highly skilled craftsmen, he runs the discreet but necessary restoration workshop belonging to the Parmigiani Group, where he is also in charge of maintaining the Sandoz collection. .
Just recently, Parmigiani unveiled the result of his team’s latest task: a pistol integrating an automaton singing bird that pops out of the barrel once the mechanism has been started. Michel Parmigiani and his coworkers naturally benefited from the previous experience of restoring a similar object belonging to the Patek Philippe Museum. It helped them save precious time as this singing bird pistol was in worse shape. To start, the watchmakers created a bigger reproduction of the mechanism, thereby counting on the help of the whole group in terms of research and development. This leads us to mention the fact that the Parmigiani Group is one of the most integrated today and thus able to repair delicate mechanisms of yesteryear according to the rules of the art form as well as inventing the most fascinating mechanisms bound to populate the future of watchmaking – such as the Senfine concept watch introduced at the 2016 edition of SIHH, which integrates a silicon “sauterelle” regulator that tremendously increases the power reserve.
Two other double-barrel pistols outfitted with songbirds have also been identified elsewhere in the world. And they, too, need to be restored.
