Is guilloché the same as engraving?

It's a kind of engraving: a geometric, machine-guided one. Freehand engraving, of scenes or lettering, is a different craft.

What is a guilloché dial?

A dial engraved with a fine repeating pattern of lines, traditionally cut by hand on a rose engine, that catches the light as the watch moves.

How guilloché is made

Traditional guilloché is cut on a rose engine or straight-line engine, hand-cranked lathes that move the dial blank against a cutting tool along a path set by a stack of cams. The engraver controls the depth and pressure by hand, line by line, so a single dial can take hours. Abraham-Louis Breguet made it fashionable on watch dials in the late 1700s, and Breguet still uses it today.

Most guilloché-style dials made now are stamped from a die or cut by CNC machines. They look similar at a glance, but hand-cut lines are crisper and deeper, with sharper edges that throw more light. Brands that use real hand engraving say so.

Common patterns

Clous de Paris, or hobnail, is a grid of tiny pyramids. Barleycorn, grain d'orge, is a woven-looking pattern of small ovals. Sunburst guilloché radiates from the centre, and waves, basketweave and flinqué, guilloché under translucent enamel, are rarer. Audemars Piguet's tapisserie is a guilloché pattern too.

Guilloché dials in our catalog

11 current watches in our catalog have a dial described this way, least expensive first:

Current watches in our catalog, which is weighted to popular enthusiast models.

Questions

How do you pronounce guilloché?: Gee-yo-SHAY.
Is guilloché the same as engraving?: It's a kind of engraving: a geometric, machine-guided one. Freehand engraving, of scenes or lettering, is a different craft.