The Royal Oak Offshore Grand Prix – James Gurney Issue 40

The Royal Oak was one of the most revolutionary watches of its time. Just as the industry's attention was fixated on the possibilities and threats presented by the arrival of quartz technology, Audemars Piguet decided to make sports watches to haute horlogerie standards. A decision that must have seen at least quixotic then, but is now acknowledged as uncannily prescient.

Audemars Piguet went on to dominate the new market segment they created with the Royal Oak, though they quickly had company in the shape of Patek's Nautilus and, a little later on, Blancpain whose revival was lead by an ex-Audemars employee named Jean-Claude Biver. The 1980s and 1990s saw a rapidly increasing number of players in this market sector, notably Piaget's Polo and Vacheron Constantin with their Overseas. A common thread ran through all the watches in terms of both design and concept - essentially simple, classic watches given a sporty, contemporary feel, the distinguishing feature being the integrated bracelets of a noticeably high quality and the avowedly high-quality movements used within.

Audemars gave the Royal Oak a new lease of life in the early 1990s with the launch of the Offshore, a bolder take on the original which also used more novel material combinations - including rubber - all quite radical given how conservative the industry still was at the point. That decade and the following brought new companies such as Jaeger-LeCoultre with their ill-fated Gran'Sport onto the scene to join the likes of Panerai and even Parmigiani. But all the while, the Royal Oak and the Offshore were the acknowledged standard - the original that others were compared to.

Mentioning Jean-Claude Biver and Hublot in the opening section of an article celebrating the next generation of Royal Oak Offshores might not be guaranteed to delight AP and comes seriously close to a lapse of manners. All the same, when it was launched, Hublot's Big Bang lived up to the name in more than just the hype. The Big Bang represented a serious challenge to AP both at the sharp end of consumer sales and in AP's self-image.

The Big Bang built on the Offshore idea and took it far beyond anything it seemed that AP would be capable of, not so much in terms of design - though the Big Bang definitely looked fresher, being nearly 15 years younger - but in the associations and buzz Hublot quickly built around the brand. The new materials, which Hublot managed to persuade the world they were first with, the limitless limited editions, the burgeoning partnership roster that ranged from the ultra-exclusive Monaco yacht club to the global mega-stars of Manchester United, via the man who flew his Hublot emblazoned jet-pack across the Channel to the delight of news channels across the world. And the watches sold - on walking into the business cabin of any international flight, the first non-Rolex you would see was guaranteed to be a Big Bang.

Stepping up

It seemed as if AP, with all the restrictions imposed by an existing brand built around the company's position as one of the grandest of Grands Maisons didn't really have an answer. It was not as if the Offshores weren't selling, but the challenge presented by Hublot was not to be ignored either. But Audemars Piguet is around for the long term. If that means restrictions on the types of partner the brand can be associated with, the other side of the coin is the immense watchmaking talent the company has in-house, either at Le Brassus or at AP Renaud et Papi. Aside from their more purely horological activities, AP has not stood by idly while Biver and Hublot have garnered all the attention. Nevertheless, the enthusiastic response from collectors to AP's various concept watches and special projects such as the unfeasibly vast 'Schwarzenegger' T3, was never likely to be enough to wrest back the top spot in this sector. While AP is no doubt sanguine about other entrants to what they refer to as the 'Prestige Sports' segment, the perception that Biver and Hublot were leading the agenda must surely have been considered unacceptable.

The concept watches, the T3 and the influence of Renaud et Papi's Formula 1 approach to watchmaking were not, however, irrelevancies as the new generation of Royal Oak Offshores amply demonstrates. Equally important has been that, in common with almost all the major watch companies, AP has been busy converting at least some of the vast growth in revenues into bricks and mortar, their new manufacture extension being almost the first building you see as you come down from the Col du Marchairuz.

Replete with all the usual workshops and ateliers as it is, two parts of the new manufacture stand out; the museum which demonstrates how AP's past so directly influences the company's present day working - there are pocket watch ebauches from the 1920's both on display in the museum and being worked on in the ateliers - and, more directly of relevance to the new Offshore, is the forged carbon department.

AP has clearly decided that this material has a part to play in the future, not just of their watch production, but also their brand identity. Where other companies order the ceramic parts they need or buy in the latest alloy from the supplier, forged carbon is made at AP from start to finish. It may be just one in the plethora of materials introduced into watchmaking over the past two decades (a cornucopia that ranges from rubber to alloys composed of exotic and reassuringly expensive elements such as niobium), but this material has a number of highly desirable properties.

A neutral composite, that is strong, light and almost impossible to chip, dent, scratch or deform, forged carbon can be moulded accurately with very low error rates. Smooth and warm to the touch, the material has a really distinctive visual texture, meaning that it is extremely difficult to mimic. Forged carbon is made by filling a mould with ultra thin carbon fibres bound together in a polyamide resin wire just 1mm in diameter. The mould is filled under extreme pressure (7500 N/cm2 according to AP). The pressure and resulting heat (2400°C) fuses the filaments into a solid of extreme hardness - 626 on the Vickers scale (316L stainless steel, a common watch case material comes in at a mere 140HV). Finishing elements such as the threads for the bezel screws are obviously difficult at this level of hardness, but not impossible and clearly worth it.

Desirable as it is, it might seem strange for a company such as AP to have invested quite so heavily in mastering its use. The answer, however, lies in the scale of the investment. By producing it in-house, AP emphasizes its purity as a manufacture, a status that is all the more highly prized given the rise of so many specialist suppliers in the industry.

Into the future

So where the Big Bang is an expression of the moment, the new Royal Oak Offshore Grand Prix is an expression of AP's history and future. In terms of the past, the new Offshore GP is an evolution, importing ideas and characteristics from earlier concept watches into the original Offshore design. In terms of the future, the Offshore GP has boldness and freshness that is easily the match of the Big Bang, but, forged carbon apart, perhaps the crucial difference is inside with the Cal.3126 AP movement. After all, a prestige sports watch needs an in-house movement by definition.

Comprised of 365 components, the 3126 is AP's new 'tractor' movement and has a number of useful features including an anti-magnetic soft-iron cage and a variable-inertia balance with eight screw weights, a new and apparently highly stable balance cock, hacking, a 60 hour power reserve and fast date correction with an integrated security system to prevent damage from re-setting the watch at the wrong moment. The watch will sell on its exterior first though, both through its design and construction and through the cachet of the name on the dial - Audemars Piguet is one of the very few Grands Maisons.

Massive (but not excessively so), the Offshore GP is all purposeful angles and facets, particularly the forged carbon bezel with its louvres that recall, without too great an imaginative leap, the air intakes on an F1 car. Unlike previous incarnations the screws stand away from the bezel making them seem somehow more purposeful. The bezel is matched by an equally forceful pusher and crown set-up that are almost too complex and techy - there is even an inset in the crown, colour-matched to the dial tapiserrie.

The strongest element of the ROOGP design is the dial with its multi-layer combination of colours, patterns and textures. The attention to detail is staggering, just look at the way the minute hand is reversed half way along its length so that it is equally visible over the red inner and black outer dial. That red dial - a central anodised aluminium plate decorated with the characteristic Méga Tapisserie pattern - links the ROOGP to the Offshore series as a whole, but is noticeably sharper than previous incarnations and works particularly well in the red of the 'basic' titanium model.

If there's one design element that fails on this version, it is the bronze inner flange, which simply jars against the red dial of the titanium model and the blue tapisserie of the platinum version. That cavil apart, the ROOGP is the perfect riposte from AP. A new company may have the buzz and freedom to break all the rules and grab all the headlines, but the point of being AP is that the heritage and tradition isn't just a story, it is a powerful resource. Being a true manufacture might mean curtailed freedom, but the end result speaks for itself.

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The Military Collection – Ken Kessler Issue 36

Watch types, specific brands, promotional pieces, limited editions – there’s no shortage of themes for watch collectors. But choosing a theme is advisable, because the sheer profusion of timepieces, coupled with the “collector’s bug” can overwhelm you. It’s like anything we might collect: specialise or go crazy.

Ken Kessler
Probably the most obvious and most popular theme of all is collecting watches from a single manufacturer. It’s safe to say that Rolexes are the most feverishly amassed, while those of even deeper pockets covet Patek Philippes. Study auction results over the past 20 years, and you’ll find that those two houses set the highest records and are the subjects of the greatest number of single-make auctions. They’ve also generated the greatest number of books dedicated to their minutiae. But we’ll deal with Rolex and ‘PP’ later in the series. To launch QP’s guide to watch collecting, we’re looking at military watches, which run a close second to concentrating on a single make.

It should be pointed out that, for many collectors of military watches, an obsession with war, militaria, combat, et al, might play little or no part in the passion. If I am even remotely typical of military watch collectors, I focus on them because they are intrinsically superior timepieces, and that’s because they have to be. Of all the watches with life-or-death functionality, probably the only civilian types that share the same gravity of purpose are diving watches.

As a rule, the most interesting military watches tend to contain superior movements, housed in extra-rugged cases. With the exception of ceremonial or presentation pieces and certain officers’ watches, they tend not to feature cases made of precious metals; instead, they’re made mainly of stainless steel, or for older models, plated brass or other base metals. If your interests go back to WWI, you’ll also find some in silver, especially those converted from small pocket watches.

Rough with the smooth
This adds two characteristics that make military watches more desirable for those who value function over fashion: the first is that stainless steel is the best case material for wristwatches on every level, bar glamour, with only costly, modern exotica such as titanium challenging its supremacy. The second benefit is that the price of vintage military watches rarely suffers the inflation imparted by gold or platinum. So it’s safe to characterise military watch collectors, whether or not they have a passion for military history, as being attracted to the subject by sheer functionality.

Which is not to suggest that a sizable component of the military watch-collecting fraternity doesn’t consist of ex-servicemen. A friend of mine and fellow collector is ex-RAF and only collects watches issued to that branch of the services, giving him a personal reason for assembling a selection of pilots’ watches with genuine RAF provenance. For some, I’m sure, there’s an element of playing soldiers. But for many, it’s simply their purity.

This extends to both the watches’ functions and visuals, in addition to the ruggedness of the aforementioned cases and movements. There are no such things as military watches with hard-to-read dials, because accurate timekeeping, communicated to the wearer with speed, is their raison d’être. Legibility is even more crucial when conditions include underwater activity or piloting an aircraft, especially in a darkened cockpit, while precise timekeeping means that many military watches feature hacking seconds for precise setting.

Even within the seemingly narrow field of military watch collecting, there are subdivisions that will help novices to focus their energies, e.g. my friend who concentrates on RAF watches and who is rarely tempted by anything else. Other subjects include nationality (Italian military watches are amongst the ‘coolest’, of course, while British are the most plentiful and interesting), type (chronographs, pocket watches, diving watches, pilot’s watches), era (WWI or WWII, Viet Nam, modern conflicts) or brand. For the latter, IWC, Lemania, Hamilton and Omega are among those offering the richest pickings.

As with all other forms of collecting, condition and provenance figure highly in determining the worth of a piece, but for once proving the latter is rarely an issue. Aside from fakes – more of which anon – most military watches wear their provenance in the form of identification on the caseback, not inside, so it’s easy to see if a specific watch is military issue or the civilian version. In some cases, there are genuine military watches without the anticipated engravings, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.

Condition, however, is far more important, because military watches, by their very nature, are used and abused. Finding a ‘mint’ 1950s IWC military watch is not the same as acquiring a mint IWC civilian watch. And while some casework can be polished; the dials, hands and crystals present the greatest challenge, for replacement parts are hard to come by, and collectors – regardless of the topic – hate restorations, be it paintings, cars or timepieces.

Then there are the movements. Unless you have the skills to open cases and assess the condition of what’s inside, you are at the mercy of the vendor and your own judgment. Is the watch working, and if so, is it keeping reasonable time? If it’s not working, is the price low enough to allow you to pay for a repair without exceeding the watch’s ‘working order’ value? However tempting it might be to pick up a battered Viet Nam-era Hamilton for £200, it if needs £300 worth of servicing you’ve exceeded the cost of buying one in better condition.

Military watches, alas, stopped being bargains nearly 20 years ago, when the Gulf War, for some reason, made the military look ‘chic’. This military-cool coincided with the boom in watch collecting so WWWs (‘Watch, Wrist, Waterproof’), seemingly overnight, went from £25 to £200. Gone are the days of IWC Mk 11s for £350, let alone £35.

Good ol’days
Up until the 1990s, military watches of all varieties were plentiful, with only the merest handful showing anything in the way of values above the £25-£200 mark: the Breguet Type XX chronograph, the oft-cited IWCs, oversized pilot watches worn by Nazis. This author even recalls original Panerais for under £500, at a time when those were only coveted by Rolex collectors who knew that the original Radiomir had a Rolex-labelled movement. So, I fear, there is no good news for those on a budget just starting out with military watches.

Probably the most plentiful and least expensive are the WWW watches, manual-wind models with small seconds, which were sourced from a dozen or more brands. Timor, Vertex, Longines, Record, Eterna, Smiths, Omega – there are plenty to choose from, all virtually identical on the outside, except for the name on the dial. It must be remembered that the specification was set by the military, and that the watch manufacturers were subcontracted to produce watches to those specifications. What makes one differ from another is the quality of the movement and the prestige of the brand, so WWWs and the similar, primarily white-dialled ATPs (‘Army Trade Pattern’) can range from under £50 for beaten examples, primarily of value for scavenging for spares, to the auction-only price levels of the rarest IWC Mk Xs.

So why is IWC’s Mk X worth ten times what you’d pay for a seemingly identical Timor? IWC’s manual movements of the 1940s and 1950s are regarded as some of the finest ever to grace a wristwatch. The more pedestrian of working WWW models cost anywhere between £100 and £400. An IWC Mk X will probably start at £1500 in rough shape and top out at £3000-£4000 for a fine quality example, depending on whether or not it’s one of the rare variants.

When sweep seconds replaced small seconds in the late-1940s and early 1950s, two classics emerged that now remain permanently in the Top 10 of ‘Must-Have’ military collectibles: the IWC Mk 11 and the 1953 Omega. The former, though in production from 1948 until the early 1980s, and produced in reasonably high numbers, enjoys limitless desirability because its dial is the epitome of the lucid military watch face, with its ‘Broad Arrow’ marking, triangle at 12 o’clock and other details that render it nearly Bauhaus. Add to it one of the finest manual-wind movements ever made, and you have a piece that today fetches anything from £2000-£5000, depending on variations, e.g. a ‘hooked 7’ dial or issuance to one of the smaller services.

Omega’s offering for 1953, made only during that year, is another model of supreme legibility, with a superb movement, though not quite up to IWC’s standards. In this case, it’s the low numbers that add to its desirability. A determined collector should be able to find one for £1000 or less. The specialist dealers, whose pricing structure works in the manner of London restaurants’ formula for pricing a bottle of wine, will charge you £2500 or more.
If you don’t wish to look at watches costing four figures, the market still yields large quantities of Hamiltons, Smiths, Vertexes, CWCs and Timors for reasonable sums. Because the most common watches are WWII issue and are, as far as I can tell, nearly all manual wind, any good watchmaker can get them up and running. The fun starts when your collecting tastes move on to chronographs, diving watches and models with dedicated parts beyond the cosmetic.

There’s a reason why military watch collectors love the Lemanias, and not just their handsome, near-perfect dials. Lemania manual-wind chronograph movements are among the most respected in wristwatch history, they’re plentiful, and they’re reliable. After all, they didn’t end up being NASA-approved by accident. Despite their popularity, Lemanias, such as the classic Air Ministry 6B from the 1950s through the 1970s, can be found for £1000-£1500 in fine condition. Conversely, the highly desirable Breguet Type XX of the 1950s, with Valjoux 22 movement, commands at least three times as much.

Unlikely origins
Military watches come from surprising sources: a superb flyback chronograph was made by Heuer for the German Bundeswehr in the late 1960s, a handsome beast, which you should be able to locate for under £1500. In addition to the magical Breguet XX, other companies, such as Dodane, produced models to identical specification, but they sell for much less. Jaeger-LeCoultre, over the years, has created some of the most sought-after military watches, their version of the Mk 11 is considered by some to be the equal of the mythic IWC. Seiko, as Seikosha, manufactured watches for the Japanese forces, while the lowering of the Iron Curtain meant a flood of Russian and Eastern European watches in the 1990s, including diving watches up to 70 mm across! And Longines has issued so many classic military pieces that they’ve been inspired to reissue a commemorative version of their WWW for release in late 2009.

Because of the profusion of models, the field of military watch collecting is broad and full of opportunities for collectors, so you can start small and work your way up to the dearer rarities. In addition to those cited, other sensational and desirable models for the wealthier collectors include Omega and Blancpain diving watches, anything with low survival rates or production figures, such as Panerais and Luftwaffe fliegeruhren, watches connected to famous military figures, and possibly the most valuable of all: the Rolex Submariner commissioned for the Royal Navy.

Easily identified by its dagger hands rather than the standard ‘Mercedes’ hand, and a strap rather than a bracelet, the Rolex Submariners 5513 and 5517 from the 1970s are among those items that cause pandemonium at auctions. Total production of all the variants is believed to be around 1200 pieces, but those numbers are irrelevant: when one does turn up at auction, in fine condition and with proof of authenticity, the number that matters is a price that can reach somewhere in the region of £70,000. Why? Because Rolex collectors are the oddest of beasts, the sort of people who will pay an extra £2000 because a Submariner has red print rather than white on the dial. As genuine military-issue Rolexes are so rare, you have both the general Rolex enthusiasts and the military watch hounds vying for the same pieces. And to find any 5513 or 5517 for under £30,000 nowadays is to snag a bargain.

Faking is topic that is called to mind when dealing with Rolex, for it is one of the most counterfeited of all military watches. You can now find scarily authentic ‘replicas’ – the favoured euphemism for fakes – with ETA or Asian movements for under £300, complete with the correct Royal Navy strap. They look exactly like the genuine article, with only their as-new condition providing a clue to their ‘fakeness’. I’ve seen counterfeit dials for IWC Mk 11s from Italy that are so close to perfect that they’ll fool most experts. Conversely, I have seen a bogus IWC MK X and an Omega ‘53 from South America, which wouldn’t have fooled even that loathsome buffoon Chavez.

So be careful, especially when you’re looking at the most coveted pieces. If you’re a remotely savvy collector, you already know that you’ll need to call on those eBay/flea market/boot fair street-smart skills of assessing the vendor as well as the goods. Fortunately, we’re now blessed with at least a half-dozen sublime books on military watches that will help you to identify what you’re considering. Invest in at least two of them: British Military Timepieces by Konrad Knirim (see page **) and Military Wristwatches: Sky Land Sea by Michele Galizia.

A final word of warning, to close this instalment: 30 years ago, when I found my first military watch – a Vertex WWW – which I wore proudly, a friend who happened to be an officer in the British Army and who served in Northern Ireland, put a damper on my enthusiasm. He pointed out that a number of servicemen do not wear their military-issue watches when they’re in civilian clothing. ‘Certain elements might use it as a clue to one’s status as an enlisted man. And there are times when that is not advisable.

Although we lived as far away from Northern Ireland as one can get while still in the British Isles, and I looked nothing like a ‘soldier on leave’, thanks to my paunch, bearing and carriage, I took note of his warning. Given the current state of the planet, I, too, would advise wearing civilian timepieces when travelling through Belfast, the Middle East….

A Basic Repertoire That Will Not Break The Bank

Any common small-seconds WWW model, e.g. Vertex, Timor, etc.
Lemania or CWC chronograph.
1960s/1970s sweep-seconds Smiths.
US Army Hamilton, Elgin or Waltham A-11.
1960s Bundeswehr 3H Heuer Chronograph.

A Dream Collection That Will Break The Bank

IWC Mk X.
IWC Mk 11.
Jaeger-LeCoultre Mk 11.
Eterna WWW.
Omega 1953.
Pre-WWII Longines Weems or full-size Lindbergh.
Lange & Sohne or IWC Luftwaffe Fliegeruhr.
Rolex Royal Navy Submariner.
Breguet Type XX, early models.
Any pre-1960 Panerai, especially 1950s Egiziano or Rolex-powered Radiomir.
Blancpain, Lip or Tornek-Rayville Fifty Fathoms, first series, especially labelled Milspec 1.
1880s Girard-Perregaux for the German Navy.

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The Legend of the Three Gold Bridges - James Gurney Issue 34

Amid the noise and hyperbole generated by the excitement of new launches, new brands and new designs, it can be easy to lose the point, to lose sight of the central truth about watches – they can be objects of rare beauty, they can be repositories of real passion and emotion. To see and handle a watch such as Girard-Perregaux’s Three Gold Bridges is to understand the difference between the merely desirable and the truly fine and precious.

James Gurney
Strangely part of this difference lies in the fact that I feel quite content not to actually own one, I am merely pleased they exist and happy to have the chance to spend time appreciating them and all they represent. And these watches genuinely represent philosophies and ideas of value, claims that are all too often made by watch companies on behalf of watches unable to support them.

While the watches are certainly eloquent enough to bespeak the skill and patience and other virtues, the complete picture is only to be had by returning to the source and to the people who make the watches and observing the dexterity and thoughtfulness they practice at the workbench.

For the ‘Tourbillon Sous Trois Ponts d'Or’, which sounds so much more elegant in French, returning to the source means a visit to the manufacture of Girard-Perregaux in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the town that is for watchmaking part Vatican City, part Detroit (Louis Chevrolet was a native) and part Paris. La-Chaux-de-Fonds is quite possibly the only town in the world where the vernacular architecture is art nouveaux, and the street plan was laid out to afford watchmakers as much natural light as possible.

I was also interested to see whether the Trois Ponts d’Or was as central to Girard-Perregaux’s self-identity as I believed it to be and whether the idea was a living tradition or a museum piece. But first a little history.

History class
The Trois Ponts d'Or developed as a complete idea between the 1860’s when Constant Girard first started making tourbillon watches and 1884, when the Trois Ponts d'Or had become so identifiable with his work that he took out a patent to protect himself from imitators. The key moment was when Constant Girard decided to stop merely incorporating tourbillons into existing movement designs and to create a movement that showed the tourbillon as something to admire as well as something to provide prize-winning precision. In fact this was not a momentary event but an evolution that was refined and refined until the basic elements of three pointed gold bridges supporting the three basic elements (power, gearing and escapement) of a watch became established.

Somewhere along this evolution, the design was strong enough that it could be identified as the work of Constant Girard without any need for looking for a maker’s mark or name. And once people began ascribing symbolism to the number of bridges – the company was apparently quite content to allow Latin American markets to believe that a reference to the Trinity was involved – the strength of the idea was established beyond doubt.

The Trois Ponts d'Or watches were made in very small numbers, as much as showcases for the company and as prize-contenders than as watches for sale. Not being “production” watches, the Trois Ponts d'Or also served as vehicles for new ideas and concepts, even including an entirely new escapement  (the “pivoted long detent escapement” used in the 1889 Paris Exhibition-winning watch is considered one of the finest if most difficult to produce ever made).  The point of this is that the Trois Ponts d'Or tradition is not just about absolute excellence of craft and skill, it includes innovation as well and this is what makes the tradition so vital.

This element of innovation was, to my surprise, one of the first things mentioned by Luigi Macaluso, president of Girard-Perregaux, when I asked about the Trois Ponts d'Or. “Constant Girard’s idea for the Trois Ponts d'Or was as a path of innovation, that continues in Girard-Perregaux today. Forty years ago it was Girard-Perregaux that realised the first quartz production watch and set the standard frequency of 32.6kHz that the industry still follows. The visionary aspect of Constant Girard is like the prancing horse of Ferrari, it’s both badge and idea.”

Dr. Macaluso was insistent that innovation was an essential part of Girard-Perregaux’s status as an authentic manufacture. “We like to focus totally on this idea, we like to improve skill and integrate sophistication all the way through. To be this is a state of mind more than an industrial investment, we have to keep inventing.”

Future plans
This does not mean that the Trois Ponts d'Or will automatically be the platform for the new Constant Force Escapement according to Willy Schweizer, but this is due to the development path of the Constant Force, rather than any inclination to preserve the Trois Ponts d'Or in aspic.

As Schweizer showed me, current and future designs of the Trois Ponts d'Or are radical enough even without the Constant Force. Already in production is a Three Sapphire Bridge Tourbillon of quite exceptional elegance and undeniably contemporary design, particularly with its white metal Laureato case.

Last year also saw the launch of the “Bi-Axial Tourbillon” in which the third bridge is discarded for a second axis for the tourbillon to rotate through. But while I was looking at a nearly completed Trois Ponts d'Or with dark-black bridges against a white gold plate, I noticed a watchmakers busy at his morning’s work – not assembling or posing the tourbillon, not regulating a minute-repeater, nothing more glamorous than polishing a single screw.

With this contrast I think the whole story of the Trois Ponts d'Or became clear. While, as Luigi Macaluso says, there is an elemental geometric grace to the Trois Ponts d'Or architecture, the real secret of these creations is that this is watchmaking of the purest and most rigorous tradition, a regime where nothing is left to chance but ideas are free to blossom.

An evolution that was refined and refined until the basic elements of three pointed gold bridges became established

The real secret of these creations is that this is watchmaking of the purest and most rigorous tradition

Further information: www.girard-perregaux.com

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