This year blending together artistic beauty and crafts-making perfection, two of the ultimate challenges in watchmaking, Piaget is opening a brand-new chapter. The moon phase complication enters the Altiplano collection, introducing the Altiplano Moonphase. In each one of these creations, Piaget’s mastery is at the service of the deep significance of the constellations’ powers and of the Moon’s infinite radiance.
For decades, the Maison has worked with artists and maîtres d’art, allowing them to bring their vision and unique skills to one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry and watchmaking. Starting in the 1960’s, ultra-thin movements allowed a significative gain in creativity and elegance, thanks, in part, to hard stone dials. In 1998, the creation of the Altiplano watch was the ultimate step towardsthe spectacular union of craft and elegance.
Composed of four pieces, the exclusive métiers d’art collection takes savoir-faire and creativity to new heights, furthering the Maison’s decades-long relationship with masterful artists.
The four Métiers d’art Altiplano Moonphase watches are a work of pure beauty and precision, a luxury of intricate details and technicality made to fit on a 36mm-wide watch. Their dials were brought to life after two years of development. On a translucent blue enamel sky created by master enameller Anita Porchet, Chinese constellations are represented by small white dots and precious stones. Because Piaget loves to play with surprising designs and original features, each Guardian, representing a cardinal point and associated with one of the four seasons and elements, gently appears at night fall. The Azure Dragon stands for the East and is associated with Spring and wood; the red bird, representing the South, is close to Summer and fire. The white tiger, looking West, is naturally a friend of Autumn and metal, while the black turtle (for the North) is at ease in Winter and water.
For the purpose of respecting the Altiplano’s remarkable thinness aesthetics, the creative designs that adorn the watch’s dial had to be crafted on an infinitely small scale. Enamel and gold engraving require the highest level of expertise to fit the delicate mechanism of the Altiplano.
Underneath this star-lit night sky, moon rays of graduated diamonds, sapphires and garnets are set on the lower-half of the gold palace-decor dial. A true work of art that requires hours of work, and owes its radiance to multiple deails sprinkled across the various pieces: a deep, blue-lacquered moon-shaped oscillating weight, a moon window framed with gold ring set and graduated diamonds in a crescent moon shape.
