Audemars Piguet 125th Anniversary Exhibition

I recently visited Audemars Piguet's 125th anniversary exhibition that's currently touring the world. It was held in a large room of an old guild hall in the mid-evil part of my home-town Zurich, a very fitting setting for the presentation of these outstanding timepieces. The watches and clocks on display consisted of classic AP models from the past, one-off show-pieces made specially for the anniversary and all their new models from the SIHH fair in Geneva.

After I entered the hall, a gentleman came over and handed me a 50-page color catalog of all the 125 special timepieces shown and also offered to answer any questions I had. Big mistake making such an offer to a WIS ... First question: "Is there a watchmaker in the house ?" First answer: "Well yes, in fact I am one". Turned out he was AP's director of technical communications and for the next two hours, he took me on an extraordinary tour of the glittering display cases. It was a real treat getting all the technical explanations from a person who had been involved in the design and manufacturing of many of the watches present. I was able to ask questions to my heart's content, here's a short summary of what I learned.

AP bought the machinery to make Caliber 2120/2121 from JLC and are producing it themselves now. A new Royal Oak in the original Jumbo size and display back, fit with this beautiful movement, will be released this year.
Caliber 2121 is designated as a 36 jewel movement but in fact uses 44 (give or take a few) as both the rotor and part of the date-ring mechanism use jewels as bearing. But as the Swiss Watchmaking Federation won't allow these to be counted, they don't show up in the count.
one of the most difficult tasks they had to master was using plates and bridges out of 18 K gold for their minute-repeater/sonnerie showpieces. As the material is so soft, you get exactly one chance to set a jewel straight. One mistake, and the whole part goes back to the "melting pot", here's and example of such a Grande Sonnerie:

Add AP to the list of companies that have their own chronograph movement. Their take a deep breath Tourbillon Minute Repeater Chronograph Rattraprante was designed and built from scratch by AP subsidiary Renaud & Papi. I asked if the movement, stripped of the tourbillon and repeater, may be used in simpler watches of the future. It's a possibility but the large size is a problem. Correction: The movement is based on the Lemania 2310

the only pictures I had seen of the new AP handwind movement showed a very pretty construction but a rather rough finishing. The actual production models are much more refined, the bridges have very subtle, wood-applied Geneva stripes. I also got to see a drawing of a prototype dial that will be offered as an option in the future, it's machined-turned (guilloche) with a Geneva stripe pattern in the inner ring, very pretty. Here's the current version

The dial of the Royal Oak has been slightly updated, the embossed squares will be larger than before and give the dial a very three-dimensional look. Two cracking new variations were on display:
1. Grande Complication Royal Oak with minute repeater, perpetual calendar and split-second chronograph made out of titanium and red gold, the case is approximately 44 mm in diameter ! Price around 650,000 CHF/400,000 US-$. The picture does the watch no justice at all.

A Royal Oak perpetual calendar moon-phase in matt-polished steel and highly< polished platinum, the dial is deep black already with the new style, larger squares. It has a display back with an also black rotor ... the moon's black too. To be totally frank, this is the coolest watch I have ever seen. It's 50,000 CHF/30,000 US-$, help me ...
Their most extraordinary new piece is the "Equation of Time, sunrise-sunset perpetual calendar". A central hand points to the time when the sun is the highest (real noon) on the bezel. In two helper dials, the time of the sunrise and sunset (with hour and minutes) is shown. All these indications are of course hooked up to the perpetual calendar and calibrated bezels are available for all major cities of the world (bezels for any other city can be had on special order, the sunrise/sunset indication also has to be appropriately adjusted)
I of course asked the rumored sale of JLC (who AP have a 40 % stake in) and the rest of the LMH group. We will be getting the answer very soon
90 watchmakers work for AP which is 40 % of all employees, according to my guide a good percentage.
They're working on a new type of power-reserve that will for the first time be driven by measuring the force. He was quite excited about it but I didn't quite follow, we'll have to wait and see what it's all about
I asked what would happen with all the pieces, once the anniversary tour was over. All of them are for sale and 80 % have already been sold.

On to the show …

Click on thumbnail to view a larger image of the watch

Grande Sonneries and Minute repeaters

Grande Sonneries with Carillon (minutes are chimed with three different tones), handwind caliber 2890 with plates and bridges out of 18 K red gold, 260,000 US.$/270,000 US-$

Grande Sonneries Skeleton handwind caliber 2868 with plates and bridges out of 18 K red gold, 411 diamonds, 210,000 US-$/Minute repeater Skeleton caliber 2866 with plates and bridges out of 18 K red gold, 150,000 US-$

Perpetual Calendars with minute repeater, handwind caliber 2866/2807 with plates and bridges out of 18 K white gold, 190,000 US-$/180,000 US-$

Tourbillons

Edward Piguet Tourbillon, handwind caliber 2871, 70,000 US-$/85,000 US-$

Automatic Tourbillon with caliber 2875 from 1991, AP Museum
Edward Piguet Pocket watch Tourbillon, handwind caliber 2871, platinum case, 93,000 US-$

Pocket watches

Starwheel Two Faces Pocket watch, handwind caliber 5026/2813. Date and month indication on the back by sapphire disks, 78,000 US-$

Perpetual calendar/minute repeater pocketwatch with extraflat caliber 29908 and platinum case. From 1923, AP Museum

Grande Complication: grande sonnerie, chronograph rattrapante, perpetual calendar, moonphase, caliber 5542, hand-engraved case out of 18 K yellow gold from 1895, AP museum

Jumping hour pocketwatch with minute repeater, handwind caliber 2855/2823, titanium case, 270,000 US-$

Royal Oaks

Royal Oak skeleton perpetual calendar, 542 diamonds, 60,000 US-$

Royal Oak with hand-engraved red-gold tree motif on dial, automatic caliber 2120, white-gold case, 40 diamonds, 41,000 US-$

Royal Oak with hand-engraved white-gold dial, automatic caliber 2120, white-gold case, 40 diamonds, 48,000 US-$

Clocks

Travel alarm clock, 18 K white-gold case, covered with rubies, diamonds and mother of pearl, 216,000 US-$

Table clock with Grande Sonnerie, handwind caliber 2868, 18 K white gold with diamonds and hand engraved mother of pearl, 390 diamonds, 516,000 US-$

Walking stick watch with Grande Sonnerie handwind caliber 2868. 18-Karat white gold handle. Hand-engraved steel sword by Wilkinson inside the rose-wood stick. Too cool to be true.

Charleston table clock, quartz movement, 18 K white cold with diamonds, mother of pearl and feathers, 87,000 US-$

Unusual shapes

Wristwatch with shaped 18 K white-gold case, handwind caliber 2080 (pity for such a nice movement), thankfully one of a kind, 9,500 US-$

Wristwatch with shaped 18 K white-gold case, handwind caliber 2080, 21,000US-$

Wristwatch with shaped 18 K red-gold case, handwind caliber 2080, 16,000US-$

Wristwatch John Shaeffer, handwind caliber 2085/2832, 18 K red-gold case with diamonds, sapphire cabochon on crown, 9,600 US-$ (which sounds like a typo)

Starwheel wristwatch, edition limited to 125 pieces, steel case, price on request

CountZ.com