Dominique Renaud joins HYT

This week, HYT CEO Vincent Perriard, announced that master watchmaker Dominique Renaud will join his team as a leader of HYT’s Fine
Watchmaking department and Special Projects in Neuchatel.

HYT also continues to invest heavily in its niche and exceptional R&D 5-year programme hand in hand with Dominique Renaud thus allowing the young Swiss company to continue to bring ground breaking innovations to the industry whilst keeping a firm grip on its production line and the watchmaking profession as a whole. HYT has many patents under application through its close partnership with Preciflex, the exclusive developer of HYT’s liquid movements.

Spread amongst engineers, chemists, marketing, sales and production, HYT and Preciflex now count a staff force of more than 33 people, a number that will increase in Q4 2014 as HYT and Master Watchmaker Dominique Renaud begin to build HYT’s new team of Watchmakers.

Vincent Perriard announced

‘We have some innovational ideas under development, advancements that will bring much more power to the motorisation of HYT’s movements. This in turn will allow us to introduce even more complications that unite mechanics and liquid in one wristwatch’.

HYT H2 Black DLC & pink gold

HYT’s hydromechanical timekeeping explained

Two flexible reservoirs with a capillary attached at each end. In one, a coloured liquid; in the other, a transparent one. Keeping them apart is the repulsion force of the molecules in each fluid.

The hours are indicated by the coloured liquid released from a flexible reservoir compressed by a piston. These reservoirs, or bellows, are located at six o’clock and are made from a supple alloy. The first coloured liquid travels through the capillary pushing the transparent one back into its own reservoir and then returning to its original position at six o’clock in what is referred to as a retrograde manner.

Preciflex fluid modules used in HYT pieces.

The two reservoirs at 06:00. While the first compresses, the second expands, and the other way round, resulting in the movement of the liquid in the capillary. As the hours go by, the coloured liquid advances. The meniscus, in the shape of a half moon, marks the separation point with the other fluid in the tube, indicating the time. At 18:00, the coloured liquid comes back to its original position, going backwards.

The secret that gets the reservoirs going? Two bellows made of a highly resistant, flexible alloy, each driven by a piston. And this is where watchmaking comes in to activate the system.

HYT is continuing its all-encompassing quest for hybridisation by introducing its new collection: the H2. This timepiece was born of a vision shared by the teams of HYT and Audemars Piguet Renaud & Papi overseen by Giulio Papi.

About Dominique Renaud

Dominique Renaud in 1988, at the Atelier Renaud & Papi

In 1977, graduates as top of the class from the National Watchmaking School of Besançon.

Between 1980 and 1986, he was working in the movement workshop of Audemars Piguet. He left AP, to co-found with G. Papi the Renaud et Papi SA. In 1989, together with Christophe Claret, they will found Renaud Papi Claret (RPC SA).

In 1992 Audemar Piguet invests in Renaud & Papi SA which is renamed Audemar Piguet (Renaud et Papi) SA. He leaves the company in 200 and he sells all his shares to AP. Dominique Renaud starts his own personal innovative projects and ideas linked to the fundaments of watchmaking.

In 2013, together with Luiggino Torrigiani will co-found Dominique Renaud SA in Eysins, in the canton of Vaud, with the objective of conceptualising (R&D), producing and commercialising innovative time pieces: A Swiss Watch Innovation Lab developing break through innovations, original ideas and highly complex movements linked to the very heart of the watch.

Some of the Renaud et Papi highlights:

• For IWC: Ultra-modern highly complex modular minute repeater for the Grande Complication
• For AUDEMARS PIGUET: the smallest minute repeater calibre and the first Grande Sonnerie Carillon Bracelet
• For JAEGER LE-COULTRE: development of the micro-repetition minute (Reverso)
• For A. LANGE & SOHNE: the Fusee Tourbillon
• For FRANCK MULLER: Various complications

More about HYT at www.hytwatches.com