Lip Churchill T18 Original mechanical gold-plated gold dial black leather strap

An original recreation

Today, a French watch is reborn with its hand-wound mechanical movement in its original dimensions. Unique and inspiring to the Swiss competition of the time, it bears the name of its caliber and is the most produced timepiece in watchmaking history by an international brand whose name is pronounced in every language. As you may have guessed, this is LIP's T18, designed, assembled and controlled in Besançon, its home town.

The little story

The T18 models from the Churchill collection by French watch brand LIP are iconic! These models are typical of the Art-Déco movement, with a rectangular case, eccentric seconds and minute track. Both classic and retro, the Churchill T18 is timelessly elegant. The collection is mainly inspired by the T18 model, which was produced from 1935 to the end of the 1950s. Acclaimed for its precision and watchmaking technique, it quickly became one of the French Manufacture's most popular models. It was also one of the first watches to feature an eccentric second.

The name of this collection comes from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, famous for his decisive actions and decisions during the Second World War. An emblematic figure of the twentieth-century political world, Wiston Churchill was an elegant English gentleman. That's why a T18 watch was presented to President Winston Churchill in 1948 by the French government in gratitude for his services to France during the Second World War. So it's a fitting tribute to rename a French watch collection in honor of a British Prime Minister.

The same model given to Winston Churchill

LIP has chosen to relaunch the most famous of all T18s: the gold-plated one offered to Winston Churchill in 1948. On this occasion, its case was slightly enlarged to conform to today's wearing style and was made of stainless steel covered with two thick layers of solid gold, each 5 microns thick: the first in 18-carat and the second in 24-carat.

The timepiece, made in only 180 numbered pieces, boasts a dial inspired by the period model with hand-applied relief numerals and small second hand at 6 o'clock. Precious, it is adorned with a rectangular, slightly curved, anti-reflective sapphire crystal. It is worn on an alligator strap, handcrafted in the Sibra workshops in Besançon.

The T18 caliber

This marvel of balance, a true icon of the 1930s-1940s, is, once again, served by the best caliber there is: the brand-new T18 hand-wound mechanical movement from LIP. Its components, which have all the same dimensions as the original ones thanks to considerable reverse-engineering work carried out by the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et des Microtechniques (SUPMICROTECH) on a first-generation T18, are machined in Switzerland by the famous La Joux-Perret factory. Finishing and decoration are carried out entirely in the Doubs region, at Roland Bailly SAS. The movement is then assembled in Besançon by the Humbert-Droz company before being cased and checked in the LIP workshops in Besançon.

Visible through the transparent caseback, it reveals its large balance oscillating today at 3 hertz for greater precision, as well as its delicate traditional finishes such as the "côtes de Genève", the circular graining, but also the colimaçonnage of the ratchet wheel.

It is important to emphasize that LIP pays particular attention to the final stages of manufacture, including the setting of the movement of the new T18 Original. Following the example of its illustrious predecessor, the Calibre T18 of the 2024 generation guarantees precision with a margin of tolerance of -12 to +12 seconds per day.