Our story
A clockmaker's workshop, still keeping time
In 1952, Émile Delorme opened a small clockmaker's workshop at 14 bis, rue des Lanternes. For forty years the neighbourhood brought him pocket watches, mantel clocks and their grandmothers' pendulums to mend. His grandson Augustin spent every Wednesday afternoon there on a stool that smelled of brass polish, watching the old man work with tweezers and patience.
Augustin became a chef, not a clockmaker. In 2013 he came back to Paris to find the workshop empty and for sale. He bought it and kept everything he could: the oak workbench, which is now the pass; the glass-fronted drawers of tiny gears; and the great wall clock, stopped at 23:23, the minute Émile closed the shop for the last time.
“Cooking is like clockwork. A hundred small parts, and the whole thing only works if every one is exactly right.” Augustin Delorme
