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Piaget, the Celebration of the First Step on the Moon

Founded in 1874 by Georges Edouard Piaget, today the by-word of the Piaget brand is “elegance”. Piaget has a dual capability — watchmaking and jewelry. Well known for their jewelry pieces, the watchmaking speciality they are famous for is their ultra-thin movements.

According to Philippe Léopold-Metzger, Piaget International’s CEO, “Piaget is a very interesting brand because we started differently to most of the other older watch brands. Between 1874 and 1943 we made movements for other brands. Then, in 1943, we started making our own watches – particularly women’s watches. Since women’s watches are smaller than men’s watches, they require very thin movements so we started to develop ultra-thin movements – I think we had found a unique segment.”

Piaget soon became leaders in women’s jewelry watches initially using only diamonds and gold. By the late 1950s, Piaget was pioneering ultra-thin wristwatches with the remarkable 9P hand-wound movement, followed in 1960 by its self-winding counterpart, the 2.3-millimeter thick Calibre 12P. The 12P earned Piaget an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the creator of the world’s thinnest watch movement. The brand continues to claim unchallenged expertise in thin mechanical movements, with their recent 830P and 430P series.

As a company, Piaget has virtually only ever made watches in gold, always working at the top end of the luxury market. “Ten years ago (and it is still true today),” says Mr Léopold-Metzger, “about 85% of the watch market was mechanical movements and, as we all know, mostly men buy mechanical watches. Today, even at auctions, value lies in men’s watches.” he points out.

As a result of this, they decided to develop their men’s watch range, and over the last five years Franck Touzeau (Watch Marketing Director at Piaget) and his team have developed several men’s watches. “We have introduced a tourbillon relatif, a perpetual calendar and a chronograph, so we now have a pretty strong selection of movements. In total, 21 new movements have been developed over the past 11 years.” says Mr Touzeau, “The movements we create are always very thin, because our philosophy is very simple: technique is at the service of design.”

Working with very thin movements means that Piaget has to use very refined techniques. “It is very difficult to increase the power reserve of a watch when the movement is very thin,” Mr Touzeau points out. “Because generally, in order to give energy to the watch components, you need to increase the size of the movement so as to capitalize on the use of the minimum of energy.”

At Piaget all elements of the movement are carefully decorated and finished. “This is why we consider today that Piaget is a fully integrated watch manufacturer in the watchmaking industry,” comments Mr Touzeau. “Because only a few brands have such a comprehensive approach to watchmaking. Not many can develop the movement, the design, the case, the set dial and the gold bracelet. This is the spirit of the company – more than 95% of the parts are developed in-house.” At Piaget, the assembly of all the elements and the case is done in their Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva manufactory and the brand’s research and development, movements and purely watchmaking operations (parts production, decoration, movement assembly, decoration and adjustment) are done in their La Côteaux-Fées manufactory, the brand’s historic site in the Neuchâtel Jura, where, apart from producing some 20,000 movements a year, they also handle the assembly and adjustment of the most complicated pieces.

By bringing together more than 40 different crafts in these two sites, Piaget believes that it has built up the necessary resources to bring their creative ideas to life.

Piaget’s Only Watch 09 is based on Piaget’s Emperador Coussin. Created in 1994, the watch was resized in 2006 with an 850P caliber. This year they wanted to give to Only Watch a watch that represented something special related specifically to 2009. They decided to illustrate the creative approach of the brand by linking their unique watch to the celebration of the 40th anniversary of man’s first step on the moon in 1969.

“We wanted to make a unique piece, which had as its movement our new caliber 860P –so reinforcing the legitimacy of the brand,” says Mr Touzeau. “The result was a very nice complication with extra large moon phases positioned at 6 o’clock in a 12mm diameter aperture. The moon is made out of a gold plate. To give it this rough appearance it was heated until boiling stage and then cooled down. This enables it to have an irregular aspect that resembles the craters of the moon. Furthermore, on the moon phase disk we have engraved our interpretation of the tread left by Neil Armstrong after the first step on the moon.

“We loved it as soon as we saw it,” says Mr Léopold-Metzger. “For us elegance is of most importance, and this watch is very elegant. The problem with today’s watch business is that sometimes people want to put 25 complications in a watch and you end up with a watch that is so complicated it is basically unreadable. This watch, on the other hand, has a very pure dial and when you look at the dial it is elegant and easy to read with its large indexes and 12mm moon phase aperture – the biggest moon phase on the market.” Furthermore, this high precision caliber only counts 1 day of digression every 122 years. It can therefore be considered as an astronomical moon phase.

Following the gold tradition of Piaget, the metal of the case of the Piaget Only Watch 09 is in pink gold with moon phases in white gold – all commemorating that first step on the moon 40 years ago. The case back of the watch is engraved with “Only Watch 2009”.

“We now find that what we are doing is apparently coming back into fashion,” says Mr Léopold-Metzger. “Piaget watches are never loud, they are always in very good taste – so it is with the Piaget Only Watch 09. We make elegant watches which are generally very thin with ultra-thin movements.”

 

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For more information contact:
Ita McCobb
Patrizzi & Co Auctioneers SA
Tel +41 22 318 28 38
e-mail i.mccobb@patrizziauction.com

Audrey Baylac
Association Monégasque contre les Myopathies / Monaco Yacht Show
Tel +377 93 10 41 70
e-mail audrey@monacoyachtshow.mc