You could spend weeks traveling through Switzerland today without seeing a single rose engine lathe – the complex machine used for centuries to produce the intricate patterns of the art known as guilloché. But, then, come to the Vallée de Joux, and you’ll find more than a dozen in a single room at the Breguet manufacture. Behind each one, a specialist guillocheur spends his or her day hand-decorating the company’s gold dials, using the very technique developed by Abraham-Louis Breguet himself at the end of the 18th century.