Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Grande Complications SIAR

The last few years have seen the S.I.A.R (International Fine Watchmaking Salon), held in the heart of Mexico City, become one of the key international watch industry events. Audemars Piguet has been an active participant since its beginnings in 2007. This salon brings together the most influential watch companies to celebrate the art of measuring time with a display of outstanding timepieces and prestige collections from the world of Haute Horlogerie. Visitors who have made the journey are given the chance to attend the various themed lectures organized during this major event. Watch lovers and collectors will also be able to relish and maybe even fall for some of the exceptional pieces specially offered for the occasion. This year Audemars Piguet will be there to celebrate 40 years of its emblematic model, the Royal Oak, as well as exhibiting a number of Grande Complications.

 

Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Grande Complication

Founded in 1875 in Le Brassus, a village in the Joux valley region in the heart of the Swiss Jura, the Audemars Piguet manufacture has always made a point of creating outstanding pieces. From the first Grande Complication pocket watch presented in 1882, to more recent models such as the Jules Audemars and the Royal Oak, the company remains in the hands of the founding families and has maintained this ancestral know-how year after year without interruption since it began.

 

These instruments for measuring time all combine the three families of complications that are the measurement of short time intervals, the chimes and the astronomical indications. But the Le Brassus manufacture wanted to push the watchmaking art to its outer limits and signed off its chronograph complication by adding the rarer one of the flyback hand. Produced one at a time by the very best master watchmakers, these marvels of miniaturization and precision taken to extremes are like so many kinetic sculptures, designed to challenge time itself.

 

As with every major art, the watchmakers at the Audemars Piguet manufacture had to master all the classic rules of their craft before being able to reinterpret them in a way that conforms to contemporary tastes. Their skilled hands gave birth to the various incarnations of an instrument for telling the time graced with Grande Complications - the Royal Oak - which now in its 40^th anniversary year, comes back in a contemporary-styled case of proven timelessness; but also with the building of a very classical pink gold fob watch.

 

Pocket watch: fundamental classic

Since 1882, the Audemars Piguet manufacture has included at least one Grande Complication watch in its collections each year for the demanding collector. This piece is individually built to order and is the fruit of several hundred hours of meticulous manual work necessitating keen knowledge of the intricacies of the trade. This way of designing is a way of conserving a craft heritage that has not changed for 130 years in the workshops, and is used to create a manually-wound mechanical caliber housed in the 18-carat pink gold half-hunter case. This movement, which can be seen through the back when opened, identifiable as a creation of the Le Brassus manufacture by its extraordinary fine work despite its complexity, demands more than two months of full-time work, totaling some 800 hours, to put together the 620 meticulously finished components, hand-adjusted one at a time.

 

 

 

This year, Audemars Piguet is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Royal Oak, without doubt the most famous luxury sporting reference in the history of the wristwatch. Created by designer Gerald Genta in 1972, this timepiece with its powerful and easily recognizable lines, sold today in a Grande Complications version, is pushing watchmaking tradition forward into the third millennium.

 

 

Royal Oak Grande Complication in White Gold: playing with transparency

Strong and dynamic, the Royal Oak Grande Complication offered here in a white gold case comes in bold luxurious lines that manage to suggest without giving too much away. The taut contours, contemporary geometry, and dynamic balance of the flange reinforced by the screwed octagonal bezel, set off the visible presence of the mechanism of a self-winding caliber just 8.55 mm thick. The case has the ideal dimensions for a watch meant to be worn with an alligator strap closed with a folding clasp, and houses a mechanical marvel, the embodiment of a heritage painstakingly acquired over 130 years and a constantly maintained tradition. Made one at a time to order, this unique watch beating to the rhythm of a caliber composed of 648 components individually adjusted and regulated by the same craftsman, is the sum of over 700 hours of his life just to produce the mechanism alone and over 120 hours of patient openworking.

This rare core, with its classic and balanced architecture, of which only ten or so are made annually, is remarkable for its extraordinary homogeneity because of its thinness (8.55 mm) - a specialty of the manufacture since its foundation - and its traditional construction

involving one single "hand" from start to finish.

This patient work, still carried out by a single watchmaker within the Grande Complications workshop, demands true mastery. Once assembled, the final creation, an artful combination of at least one functionality drawn from the three major families of complications, chimes the hour, the quarters and the minutes on demand, on concentric gongs tuned by hand to perfect their sound. It also displays correct calendar information in perpetuity and can show high-precision time measurements on its dial. This sum of information would seem to suffice, but Audemars Piguet has taken to enriching the chronograph function of its Grande Complication watches with a flyback hand, a subtle, delicate and often very useful mechanism for recording intermediate times or measuring actions with a common starting point but different ends.

 

 

Titanium Openworked Royal Oak Grande Complication: shedding light on complications…

Intense and imposing on the wrist, the new Royal Oak Grande Complication comes in a titanium case with a bracelet in the same metal and deliberately plays a radical style card. Leaving no doubt about its raw material, this model with its sleek, sporty lines turns out to belong to the very exclusive family of Grande Complication watches built each year to order by a single expert watchmaker working alongside the small team of master watchmakers in Audemars Piguet's Grande Complications workshops at Le Brassus.

Ever keen to go further, the manufacture has long ago mastered the art of sublimating the most traditional metals onto the most innovative, and with this model has brought out a Grande Complication watch at the very peak of the art with bold technical and contemporary lines. Its case is machined in titanium housing a thin top-flight self-winding mechanical caliber whose components are partially visible through the open back, but also through the transparent sapphire dial. The expert eye can identify various cams, springs and levers through the cunningly organized openwork; some of the parts finished with meticulous care by its single maker – one of the rare masters qualified to carry out a work of such complexity from start to finish. But even with the help of this glimpse into fine watchmaking the eye can only perceive a small fraction of the 648 components necessary for the proper working of this ultra complex and delicate self-winding core, combining the functions of flyback chronograph, perpetual calendar and minute repeater.

This piece which required close on 700 hours of assembly, adjustments and hand finishing, including the beveling or such finishing treatments as beading and "Geneva Stripes", and at least 120 hours of manual openworking, stands out immediately as an epitome of balance. It has to be said, the integration and marrying of the different functionalities and of certain key pieces, like the hand-tuned concentric gongs, had to be carefully thought out in order to conserve the fine quality of the caliber. This treatment, the fruit of expertise thoroughly mastered by Audemars Piguet since its foundation in 1875, gives the watch its great graphic presence blending elegance and sportiness, incomparable lightness and insane complexity, and allows it to impose its stylish embodiment of traditional watchmaking values pushed to the limit, in a modern take …

 

 

Royal Oak Grande Complication in Steel: Mechanical Seduction …

Now brought out again in steel, as was the original piece designed by Gerald Genta just forty years ago, the 40th anniversary Royal Oak Grande Complication sets out majestically to celebrate a reference which in one human generation, has gone from being an avant-garde timepiece to become an icon. And this potential is not out of place, because the instrument presented here is a concentrate of technical achievement.

 

 

In an ultra-thin movement assembled and adjusted by a single watchmaker it combines at least one functionality from the three main families of classic complications. Moreover, besides the Minute Repeater and Perpetual Calendar, the Audemars Piguet manufacture has added the flyback function to that of the chronograph, like some secret signature. A successful combination of sportiness and elegance, this highly complex instrument for measuring time houses a particularly fine self-winding Caliber 2885 movement behind its "Tapestry" motif dial produced in-house on special machines. It has no less than 648 painstakingly finished components, adjusted and assembled in nearly 700 hours to endow this extraordinary watch with a soul. Made solely to order, this piece of fine watchmaking is only ever produced in tiny quantities because the watchmakers, however devoted they may be to their art, can only manage to make ten or so of these special cores per year.

 

So we just have to accept that this timepiece with its crystalline sound produced by the two concentrically positioned gongs, capable of displaying in perpetuity (until 2100) the long times of the calendar, and accurate in measuring the intermediate times thanks to the flyback mechanism, requires patient work. The work of a single master watchmaker, this reference with the ultra thin core (8.55 mm) is all the more rare for that reason. But its value, beyond words, is emotional. For this watch, fresh from the workshops, is a stylish and fitting celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Royal Oak collection. Perfect in its complexity, this beauty, the only one to be equipped with an oscillating weight specially developed for the 40th anniversary models, is delivered like the other models in the very closed circle of Grande Complication instruments, in a case containing a "piano" - a sort of sounding board - made by talented luthiers from wood "harvested", as they so poetically put it, from the forests around the manufacture.

 

 

About Audemars Piguet

 

Audemars Piguet

Audemars Piguet is the last fine watchmaking manufacturer still in the hands of its founding families (Audemars and Piguet). Since 1875, the company has written some of the finest chapters in the history of Haute Horlogerie, including a number of world firsts. In the Vallée de Joux, at the heart of the Swiss Jura, numerous masterpieces are created in limited series embodying a remarkable degree of horological perfection, including daring sporty models, classic and traditional timepieces, splendid ladies' jewellery-watches, as well as one-of-a-kind creations. ©Audemars Piguet 2012.

 

 

ROYAL OAK 40TH ANNIVERSARY GRANDE COMPLICATION

 

MOVEMENT

- Calibre: Selfwinding manufacture Calibre 2885

- Total diameter: 31.60 mm (14 lines)

- Movement Thickness: 8.55 mm

- Number of jewels: 52

- Number of parts: 648

- Minimal guaranteed power reserve (h): 45

- Frequency of balance wheel (Hz): 2.75 (=19'800 alternances/hour)

 

CASE

Stainless steel case, sapphire caseback

Water-resistant to 20 m

 

DIAL

Blue dial with "Petite Tapisserie" pattern, white gold applied hour-markers with luminescent coating

 

BRACELET

Stainless steel bracelet with stainless steel AP folding clasp

 

FUNCTIONS

Date, day, month, leap year, moonphases, number of the week, seconds and split seconds counter, minutes counter, minute repeater on two gongs, hours, minutes, small seconds

 

REFERENCE

25865ST.OO.1105ST.02

 

 

OPENWORKED ROYAL OAK GRANDE COMPLICATION

 

MOVEMENT

- Calibre: Selfwinding manufacture Calibre 2885

- Total diameter: 31.60 mm (14 lines)

- Movement Thickness: 8.55 mm

- Number of jewels: 52

- Number of parts: 648

- Minimal guaranteed power reserve (h): 45

- Frequency of balance wheel (Hz): 2.75 (=19'800 alternances/hour)

 

CASE

Titanium case, sapphire crystal and caseback, stainless steel bezel, water-resistant to 20 m

 

DIAL

Sapphire dial, white counters, black printed numerals, gold hands with luminescent coating

 

BRACELET

Hand-stitched "large square scale" black crocodile strap with off-white stitching, titanium AP folding clasp

 

FUNCTIONS

Date, day, month, leap year, moonphases, number of the week, seconds and split seconds

counter, minutes counter, minute repeater on two gongs, hours, minutes, small seconds

 

REFERENCE

26065IS.OO.D002CR.01

 

 

OPENWORKED ROYAL OAK GRANDE COMPLICATION

 

MOVEMENT

- Calibre: Selfwinding manufacture Calibre 2885

- Total diameter: 31.60 mm (14 lines)

- Movement Thickness: 8.55 mm

- Number of jewels: 52

- Number of parts: 648

- Minimal guaranteed power reserve (h): 45

- Frequency of balance wheel (Hz): 2.75 (=19'800 alternances/hour)

 

CASE

Titanium case, sapphire crystal and caseback, stainless steel bezel.

Water-resistant to 20 m

 

DIAL

Sapphire dial, silvered counters, white or black printed numerals, gold hands with luminescent coating

 

BRACELET

Titanium and stainless steel bracelet with titanium AP folding clasp

 

FUNCTIONS

Date, day, month, leap year, moonphases, number of the week, seconds and split seconds

counter, minutes counter, minute repeater on two gongs, hours, minutes, small seconds

 

REFERENCE

26065IS.OO.1105IS.01

 

 

CLASSIQUE GRANDE COMPLICATION POCKET-WATCH

 

MOVEMENT

- Calibre: Hand-wound manufacture Calibre 2860

- Total diameter: 39.50 mm (17,5 lines)

- Number of jewels: 37

- Number of parts: 637

- Minimal guaranteed power reserve (h): 30

- Frequency of balance wheel (Hz): 2.50 (=18'000 alternances/hour)

 

CASE

18-carat pink gold case, sapphire crystal and hunter sapphire caseback,

Diameter :52 mm

 

DIAL

Opaline black dial, 18-carat pink gold hands and hours-markers, black counters with white printed numerals

 

FUNCTIONS

Date, day, month, leap year, moonphases, number of the week, seconds and split seconds

counter, minutes counter, minute repeater on two gongs, hours, minutes, small seconds

 

REFERENCE

25701OR.OO.0000XX.03

 

 

ROYAL OAK GRANDE COMPLICATION

 

MOVEMENT

- Calibre: Hand-wound manufacture Calibre 2860

- Total diameter: 39.50 mm (17,5 lines)

- Number of jewels: 37

- Number of parts: 637

- Minimal guaranteed power reserve (h): 30

- Frequency of balance wheel (Hz): 2.50 (=18'000 alternances/hour)

 

CASE

18-carat white gold case, sapphire caseback, water-resistant to 20 m

 

DIAL

Sapphire dial, white counters, black printed numerals, gold hands with luminescent coating

 

BRACELET

Hand-stitched "large square scale" black crocodile strap with 18-carat white gold AP folding clasp

 

FUNCTIONS

Date, day, month, leap year, moonphases, number of the week, seconds and split seconds

counter, minutes counter, minute repeater on two gongs, hours, minutes, small seconds

 

REFERENCE

26552BC.OO.D002CR.01

 

 

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