100% creation
Leslie Villiaume, watchmaker at the Palace of Versailles and just plain watchmaker
Audio 03:27
Leslie Villiaume, watchmaker at the Palace of Versailles © Palace of Versailles-T.
Garnier
By: Maria Afonso
3 mins
This series on the trades of the Palace of Versailles is dedicated to the craftsmen of the estate such as Leslie Villiaume, watchmaker.
She is part of the watchmaking group in charge of maintaining the castle clocks.
In total, the clocks are one hundred and fifty six in number.
We accompanied Leslie Villiaume on his tour of the castle and discovered some of the thirty clocks that are in use there.
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Leslie Villiaume, watchmaker of the watchmaking group in charge of the maintenance of the clocks of the Palace of Versailles, has an original background.
Alongside her studies, she entered the Louvre school in art history.
Watchmaking is a subject linked to history and mechanics.
Interested in clock mechanisms and restoration, Leslie Villiaume comes to Versailles for a day, she comes out of passion, inspired by the place and respectful of the object in her hands.
A "
balance to be found between putting it into operation and respecting the object
"
“If I hear anything unusual, I would know from the clocks whether or not I should be concerned, whether it requires intervention or whether this is how the clock usually behaves. The goal is to make them work, but not at all costs. Always this balance to be found between functioning, of course, and respect for the object. We are not going to force it, for example if the mechanism is really damaged, we are not going to force it to work. This is also why there are certain clocks that are stopped; they are not broken but putting them into operation would damage them even more, so we put them out of service. It is while waiting to be able to put them in restoration. After there are restoration emergencies, we cannot restore everything at the same time. There is a calendar. »
Leslie Villiaume, watchmaker at the Palace of Versailles © Maria Afonso
Clocks, sensitive objects
Clocks don't like me changes.
Leslie Villiaume during her tour verifies their accuracy.
“On this clock, there is quite a delay, it was put back in the room, not very long ago, because there was work in this room. Last week it was stopped, it didn't start up again, now it's late, it's already much better. It still works.
The delay, I don't fix it right away, I'll see how it behaves next week. If she has kept her delay, I will act. If it has recovered overall, because there are, in addition, many passages with the works, inevitably, this plays on all the climatic criteria. We can tell when people in offices are turning the heat back on because the clocks are ticking. We restore the object without taking into account the place where they are but the pendulums are objects sensitive to the conditions in which they are. "
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