Not all images were able to load for printing. Please close the print window and try again. The Maison Alcée Percée, A Fantastic Build-It-Yourself Mechanical Table Clock
Bringing mechanical clockmaking to your home, Maison Alcée offers a unique experience in every sense of the word!
In today’s day and age, it’s easy to forget that the wrist-worn timekeeping devices we love so much come from a long history of clockmaking. After all, clockmaking precedes watchmaking by several centuries, as the first mechanical clocks date back to the 13th century. But even before that, people were fascinated by the passing of time and tried making sense of it through sundials, water clocks and hourglasses. With the rise of wristwatches in the early 1900s, and especially after the invention of quartz and digital clocks and watches, the need for traditional mechanical clocks slowly started to dwindle, to a point where it’s often overlooked nowadays. Nevertheless, there’s a surprising number of very beautiful and highly interesting mechanical clocks still to be found for those who know where to look. One such offering comes from Maison Alcée, a young independent clockmaking start-up from France. And best of all, you can build the high-end Maison Alcée Percée clock in the comfort of your own home!
Maison Alcée is founded by Alcée Montfort, a young lady from France with a background in fabrics working for Hermès, and working for Cartier and TAG Heuer working behind the scenes in the watchmaking industry. It was during her time with TAG Heuer that she was ignited by the passion of watchmakers around her for the craft, urging her to pursue a lifelong dream of rethinking a luxury experience into something you can do for yourself, but on a proper luxury level. Along with her husband, Benoît, Alcée started to work on what would become Maison Alcée, which can be best described as a high-end DIY clockmaking company in the spirit of an independent watchmaking atelier. Through the help of Thierry Ducret, watchmaker and teacher at the Lycée Edgar Faure in Morteau, the Percée table clock eventually came to life.
The design of the Percée is very modern, with a circular base and top, and a vertical movement construction. The materials used for the clock are similar to the ones found in watch movements, with steel, brass, aluminium and so on. The finishing is outstanding and includes brushing, polishing, chamfering on the edges, sandblasting and more, done by Thierry Ducret. The clock is 160mm in height with a 10cm diameter and a total weight of 900 grams. It can be assembled in both a vertical and a horizontal orientation, as there are a pair of stoppers to prevent it from rolling off your desk should you choose the latter. The base clock shows you the hours and minutes, but you can upgrade it to include a chiming mechanism as well, where a spring-loaded hammer strikes a bell every hour.
Maison Aclée offers the Percée in three distinct colourways; the Percée Douce with soft-pink elements, the Percée Azur with blue components and the Percée Nuit with a black PVD-coated frame and components. Each clock comes in a neatly packaged kit, ready to be assembled by you. The whole concept aims to give a more tangible experience and emotion into buying and owning a high-end timepiece, by allowing you to safely build it yourself.
From start to finish, it’s said to take roughly ten hours in total, in which you will not only build the base and framework of the clock but also the complete movement. One of the few things that comes readily assembled is the Percée’s regulating organ, which would be too delicate to do on your own. Out of the total of 233 components, you will assemble 169 from start to finish. If everything is said and done, the clock should run at a frequency of 18,000vph and have a running time of two weeks when fully wound. If not, you can always fall back on the Maison Alcée team for help.
Along with the complete kit to build your Percée table clock, you get all the necessary tools to assemble it, as well as a very detailed instruction book that also takes you through the history of clocks, and access to in-depth videos on the various key steps. Each clock is pre-built by Maison Alcée before being shipped out to make sure it is running perfectly, and no parts are damaged or misformed.
Prices start at EUR 5,500 for the Percée Douce, EUR 5,900 for the Percée Azur you see here, and EUR 6,900 for the Percée Nuit. On top of that, you can also upgrade your Percée with the hourly chime mechanism for EUR 1,400 and purchase a beech or oak wood watchmaker’s bench for EUR 980 or EUR 1,250. Considering the level of detail and the high quality of the components and the kit as a whole, it feels like the pricing is very fair.
It’s very appealing to see such a passionate and young lady shine a light on this craft and offer something very modern to assemble for yourself. It adds soul, and even more so, emotion to owning such a piece that goes beyond anything readily assembled you can purchase. And if I have just one piece of advice for you, should you consider buying a Percée clock; go for the chiming mechanism! It will be an audible reminder of the extraordinary experience you’ve had building your own Percée.
For more information on Maison Alcée and the Percée clock, please visit Maison-Alcee.com.
