It is rare for a contemporary watchmaker to write a book that is neither a catalogue, nor a technical manual, nor a brand monograph. Horological Alchemy (2022, 187 pages, English) is one of those rare books. Denis Flageollet, co-founder and technical director of the De Bethune manufacture, one of the most inventive workshops in contemporary Haute Horlogerie, delivers here what he himself calls “my attempt to give meaning to 21st-century watchmaking” — a manifesto that is at once philosophical, poetic and technical.
Who is Denis Flageollet?
Son, grandson and great-grandson of a watchmaker, Denis Flageollet founded De Bethune in 2002 with David Zanetta. In twenty years, the manufacture has established itself as one of the most original voices in independent watchmaking: a titanium/platinum bimetallic balance wheel, a spherical moon phase in blued steel, reimagined escapements, in-house-made hairsprings, unprecedented materials (silicon, zirconium, exclusive alloys). Flageollet is at once a recognised technical developer and a bench craftsman — a rare combination in an industry where the two roles are usually kept separate.
A mandala-book, not a treatise
Flageollet says it himself: Horological Alchemy “is built and unfolds like a mandala, exploring the heart of our craft and its wider framework.” The book is not structured like a manual — there are no numbered chapters in the classical sense, no progression from simple to complex. It works in concentric circles: the gesture, the material, time, transmission, economics, art. The same questions return several times, each time a little deeper.
The themes running through the book:
- The meaning of the gesture — why hold a graver, why finish a bridge by hand when a machine would do it faster? Flageollet answers as a watchmaker, not as a marketer.
- The relationship to material — silicon, titanium, blued steel, gold, not as economic commodities but as working partners with a character of their own.
- The resilience of the Horlofabers — his own coined term for the last complete watchmaker-manufacturers, those who still master the entire chain, from design to regulation.
- The balance to be found — between craft and industry, art and technology, transmission and innovation, economics and meaning. Flageollet does not settle the question: he lays it out honestly.
- Transmission as an initiatory act — the book is explicitly conceived as a passing of the torch to the new generation of watchmakers, in the hope of inspiring “inventiveness and boldness.”
François Schuiten's illustrations
What sets Horological Alchemy apart from any other contemporary watchmaking book is its graphic dimension. The illustrations were entrusted to François Schuiten, one of the greatest living European draughtsmen — creator of Les Cités Obscures with Benoît Peeters, set designer (Musée des Arts et Métiers, Bruxelles-Sud station), an illustrator known for the archaeological precision of his line and his ability to render credible mechanical worlds.
Schuiten has captured the spirit of the book: his plates do not “decorate” Flageollet's words, they extend them. Imaginary and real machines answer one another; gears, wheels and hairsprings unfold into symbolic compositions. The result is as much a fine art book as a watchmaking manifesto.
Who is this book for?
Not for beginners trying to understand how an escapement works. Horological Alchemy is a book for those who already have some practice or culture in watchmaking and want to question its meaning. It is addressed to:
- Working watchmakers seeking to articulate their daily gesture with a broader reflection on their craft.
- Watchmaking-school students nearing the end of their training, at the moment when the question of why arises after that of how.
- Collectors who want to understand the approach of a contemporary independent manufacturer — beyond spec sheets.
- Craft enthusiasts in the broadest sense, attentive to questions of material, time and transmission.
The book is published in English only, with a carefully made hardback binding. It reads slowly, in fragments, and rewards re-reading — as much a meditative text as a watchmaking book.
To follow such thinking, the vocabulary and the mechanics must be yours first: see how to learn watchmaking online and the units of our online watchmaking course.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a technical book or a philosophical one?
Both, inseparably. Flageollet speaks of materials, escapements, hairsprings and balance wheels with the precision of a technical director; but he does so to raise questions of meaning — why this gesture, this material, this shape? It is this hybridity that makes the book singular.
Where can I buy Horological Alchemy?
Directly from the De Bethune manufacture and its retail network, as well as from specialist watchmaking booksellers (Watchprint, MisterChrono). 2022 edition in English, hardback cover. Limited print run.
Do you need to know De Bethune to appreciate it?
No. The book is neither a brand catalogue nor a monograph. De Bethune is present in the background, as the laboratory from which Flageollet speaks, but the questions raised go far beyond the manufacture: they concern watchmaking practice as a whole today.
Want to bring gesture and meaning together in your own watchmaking practice? The Décalibre curriculum offers a complete technical progression while keeping, as a guiding thread, the very question that runs through Flageollet's work: understanding why before knowing how.