Piaget
Piaget: Mastery of Ornamental Stone Dial Watches
In his 1992 book Piaget, Watches and Wonders, industry stalwart and founder of the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie Franco Cologni described how, during the 1960s, Piaget – previously known for its watch movements – took the industry by storm. “It was the wildest, most creative, most original and most non-conformist decade of the 20th century,” he writes, “and Piaget was brilliantly able to interpret the whimsical rebellious spirit of the times.”
Known today for its record-breaking, ultra-thin Altiplano watches, such as 2018’s Ultimate Concept Watch – the thinnest hand-wound watch in the world, at only 2mm thick overall – the brand started life in 1874 as a producer of high-precision watch components. But, after the founder’s grandsons, Gérald and Valentin Piaget, registered the brand in 1943, the production of Piaget wristwatches really began.
Even today, there is only a small number of watchmakers willing to dedicate themselves to the painstaking process of creating stone dials, due to the skill, work and cost involved in production. Back in the 1960s, when the process was still experimental, many dials were broken in the machining process or during hands-setting. But this did not faze Gérald and Valentin, and Piaget was a pioneer in the field, seeing its hard stone dials as a way to stand out from the crowd. As it came into the watch market relatively late, when the brand decided to launch fully-assembled timepieces, it needed them to be different and, thanks to its watches of the post-war decades, it succeeded in quickly establishing itself.
Bringing Them Home
Unfortunately, creativity was more important to the maison than record-keeping and it is not possible to have an exhaustive vision of the richness of the creations. But Yves Piaget, ex-CEO Philippe Léopold-Metzger and current CEO Chabi Nouri, all share a commitment to tracking down emblematic creations and bringing them home to the Piaget museum to create a permanent record of the early work of the house and to provide inspiration for the future.
To this end, as Brand Equity and Patrimony Director, Béatrice Vuille-Willemetz has the responsibility for gathering, safeguarding and promoting the house’s history, as well as hunting down and buying Piaget wristwatches from the late-1950s onward. Spending a morning with her in the Piaget museum, following visits to both the brand’s original home in La Côte-aux-Fées and its newer manufacture in Geneva, brings the current collection, and the direction Nouri is leading it, into perspective.
The museum bears this out, with showcases categorised by stone type, displaying gold rectangles, squares and ovals set with vibrant stone dials. The cases are integrated either horizontally or vertically into sophisticated gold bracelets in an almost infinite variety, demonstrating that Piaget craftsmen were masters of goldsmithing as well as of stones. The gold has been treated in many different ways to achieve imaginative finishes, some with brick-like links – seen in one particularly famous jade watch once owned by Jackie Kennedy – others that appear woven or are stamped with a set pattern.
A feeling of organic randomness is ingrained in Piaget’s style and reflects the importance of nature – an inspiration that still surrounds the manufacture in La Côte-aux-Fées. The idea, according to Vuille-Willemetz, is not to make a jewel look like a tree or flower, but rather to capture the structure, the movement and the dynamic of nature.
Picture This
Beyond the watches on display, the museum also features stunning period advertising and gouaches. A personal favourite is a picture of a young woman holding a fistful of watches to her lips as though struggling to choose from a box of her favourite chocolates. The gouaches are signed and numbered but, as the archives are “eclectic” with a lot of information not recorded, it is not possible today to determine the particular internal artists who designed them and when, although Vuille-Willemetz hopes that she will one day be able to “break the codes”.
Not always en vogue, the early Piaget watches are now in such demand that Vuille-Willemetz says it is getting increasingly difficult to find interesting pieces. Although this is sad for the museum, who can blame collectors-at-large for competing for these originals? These joyful 1960s designs have been copied by many brands in the 21st century, but Piaget will remain the originator of elevating ornamental stones to the level of precious stones – even setting them in a similar way.