Hands On: A Historical Audemars Piguet Triple Calendar Wristwatch from 1927
The early days of the wristwatch were interesting for the variety of forms and functions that were conceived as watchmakers were experimenting with a nascent device. One such watch is the Audemars Piguet triple calendar with moon phase in platinum from 1927 that’s one of the top lots in Monaco Legend’s upcoming sale. Now almost 100 years old, this triple calendar exemplifies the period when wristwatches, particularly complicated ones, were expensive and cutting-edge objects. Form cases in general seem to have been fashionable when wristwatches were a novelty. Leaving aside the round “trench” watches used by soldiers, many of the landmark wristwatch designs for civilians were in form cases. Examples include the Cartier Tank, Santos, and Tonneau. Many such wristwatches were time only, but there was clearly a tiny handful of clients for complicated wristwatches. Calendar watches, many in form cases, were also in vogue. Most prestigious watchmakers produced such watches, albeit on a tiny scale in a near-artisanal manner, making each of these watches almost unique. Breguet, for example, sold a tonneau-shaped retrograde perpetual calendar in 1935 to Coco Chanel’s romantic partner. Audemars Piguet made fewer than 50 such rectangular triple calendar wristwatches in the 30 years from 1924, and this is the one example known in platinum. All of these watches were powered by the cal. 10GHSM, as this one is, save for the very first example that was made in 1924 and now reside...
Time+Tide
