One of the inevitable realities of modern luxury is that what was once necessarily done by hand can now, as a general rule, be either duplicated or convincingly imitated by machine, to some degree or another. In watchmaking you can do things the old fashioned way, which usually means the more difficult and less efficient way, or you can use as much mechanization as you can get away with, given the price range at which you reside. It’s the same in almost anything else worth taking an interest in, as far as history and craft are concerned – lace was made by hand for much of its history but by the late 19th century you could duplicate just about any kind of hand-made lace on a machine.
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