dk nkf - Nordisk Konservatorforbund Danmark

of status of the watch is obvious in advertisements
[57]. As the “heritage watch” is linked to life events
and is used as a gift at specific times in people’s
lives (communion, birthday, anniversary, wedding),
Swatch is associated with social as opposed to
individual events. From the watch given as a present
for the first communion we have moved on to
special editions created for the Olympics, Mother’s
day, Valentine’s day, etc.
Conclusion
Michel Leiris made famous the comment by Marcel
Mauss: “A can may, for example, characterizes our
societies better than the most sumptuous jewel or the
rarest stamp. One should not be afraid therefore of
collecting the most humble and scorned things […]”
[58]. Applied to horology, this sentence gives full
meaning to the preservation of plastic watches and
of plastics used in watches. It is a question of saving
and revealing to the public the worth of a heritage
of undeniable historical and cultural value. Plastic
conquered the world of watch and clockmaking,
imposed new rules of production, offered new
challenges, modified the organisation of work and
our relationship to the object. It constituted a genuine
revolution in terms of production and consumption.
The plastic revolution that took place in the 1960s
was not the monopoly of the watch and clock
industry. Cheap and ephemeral products multiplied
and became archetypical of the consumer society
[59], [60]. This change was evident not only in the
economic sense, but also in the artistic world, with
New Realism (Martial Raysse, César, etc) and was
contemporary with the American Pop Art movement
(Claes Oldenburg, Allen Jones, etc) [61].
Like all artefacts made of polymers, plastic clock
and watch components raise specific issues for
conservators. Degradation phenomena are not
always well understood and appropriate treatments
have not yet been developed for all materials [62],
[63]. Historical and ethnographic research carried
out as part of CROHP projects highlight the need
to face up to these issues by pooling resources with
numerous other research studies devoted to the
conservation of plastics.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Haute Ecole Spécialisée
de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO - The University of
Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland) for their
financial support for the CROHP project, which
was the source of this presentation. We would also
like to thank all the research teams at the Haute
école de Conservation-restauration Arc, the Ecole
d’Ingénieurs et d’Architectes of Fribourg, the
Institut d’Ethnologie of Neuchâtel and the Musée
International d’Horlogerie of La Chaux-de-Fonds,
which took part in the project. Thanks to Annick
Vuissoz (HECR Arc) and Christian Degrigny
(HECR Arc) for the translation.
Author
Agnès Gelbert Miermon
Haute école de Conservation-restauration Arc
Rue de la Paix, 60
2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland
agnes.gelbert@he-arc.ch
References
Note: quotations are the author’s translations.
[1] “Conservation-restauration des polymères
utilisés dans l’horlogerie depuis la fin du 19ème
siècle. Approche pluridisciplinaire”. Project
leader: Annick Vuissoz
[2] Gelbert Miermon A. 2007 Conservationrestauration
des polymères utilisés dans
l’horlogerie depuis la fin du 19ème siècle.
Approche pluridisciplinaire (CROHP). Rapport
scientifique. Online http://www.he-arc.ch/
hearc/fr/ima/IMA_galerie/crohp_rapport_
scientifique_final.pdf
[3] Gelbert Miermon A. et Vuissoz A.. The
Conservation of Polymers used in Horology
since the 19th Century. In Brenda Keneghan
and Louise Egan (eds) “Plastics: Looking at
the Future & Learning from the past”. Papers
from the Conference held at the Victoria &
Albert Museum, London, 23-25 May 2007.
Archetype Publications in association with the
V & A, London, 2008, p. 36-44.
115