Piaget: 150 Years of Maison of Extraleganza

The Swiss manufacturer celebrates its big anniversary with a collection of 96 watchmaking and jewelry creations, the thinnest wristwatch in the world housing a complicated tourbillon, and with the first ceramic skeleton

Time Sculpted From Gold and Platinum

If you get a chance to visit the Piaget workshop in the village of La Côte-aux-Fées in the Swiss mountains above Geneva, do so in winter, when the tall pines bend under the weight of the snow and the sun's ray light up the vast meadows covered with a thick layer of silvery white snowflakes.

The scene is unreal, and as you observe it from a warm room through the large windows in front of which the work tables of the master watchmakers and jewellers are lined up, you suddenly see the whole sophisticated watchmaking picture. This is where you understand the true value of each timepiece and craftsmanship.

Even 150 years after Georges-Édouard Piaget began making clock movements, the long winter months are still as stimulating for his successors. The work is done in peace and quiet, under daylight.

A heritage of elegance

The ‘Always do better than necessary’ motto remains woven into the foundations of the workshop, a business mantra for generations of new craftsmen and company management.

Naturally, the heritage of the legendary watchmaking family is just as motivating in the summer when the various shades of green blend together. This somewhat limiting white and green palette seems to have additionally stimulated the imagination of these creative craftspeople.

Each new Piaget generation brought its technical innovations to the business, as well as the art of incorporating precious and semi-precious stones into elegant necklaces, bracelets, rings and earrings.

From the very beginning in 1874, Georges-Édouard Piaget specialized in creating ultra-thin, high-precision watch movements. In the mid-1900s, his grandsons Gerard and Valentin took the business from a small Swiss village to the Côte d'Azur: Gerald travelled the work promoting the Piaget name, while Valentin worked on developing new movements.

The 2-mm mechanical hand-wound 9P calibre brought Piaget to centre stage in 1957. Three years later, the 12P calibre was made, the thinnest automatic movement in the world at the time with its 2.3 mm. These two inventions not only changed the position of the movement inside the watch, but also freed its case and dial in terms of size restrictions, making men's and women's watches a vibrant canvas for the creative expression of goldsmiths, jewellers, engravers and enamellers.

They were determined to make watches exclusively from gold and platinum, develop their own tools and form a creative studio where they employed master jewellers. The designers were encouraged to go to high fashion shows in Paris so that their creations in the Piaget studio would reflect the modernity of the world in the 1960s.

Rising from Geneva to Global Stardom

The sales renaissance began when the first boutique was opened in Geneva in the summer of 1959. At that time, they had already conquered the world with their elegant, precise watches, and the Piaget Salon, located in a historic building on a street by Lake Geneva, was the ideal location in which to highlight their two areas of expertise: haute horlogerie and haute jewellery.

Even today, the salon and its sophisticated window looks more like a gallery than a jewellery store, and, upon entering, you get royal treatment. Once you’re a Piaget watch or jewellery buyer, you are always treated as an honoured guest at the Geneva Salon.

Yves Piaget and Piaget Society

When Gerald's son Yves joined the business in the 1960s, there was a new boom. Even thought he was a watch engineer and later a gemmologist by trade, art and handicrafts were more appealing. ‘We create watches, we don't produce them,’ he would often say.

Charming and charismatic, Yves Piaget combined his love of travel with business. Making friends with famous people around the world, he created his Piaget Society. The new glamour attracted a clientele that made sumptuous creations famous because special gold processing techniques as well as new cuts of opal, lapis lazuli and malachite, stood out the most on their wrists and necks.

Alain Delon, Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Ursula Andress, Brooke Shields and even Jovanka Broz, were some of Piaget’s dedicated fans. The global jet set went crazy for Piaget Society creations, which were the polar opposite of the Swiss Jura mountains surrounding the workshop where it all began.

Timeless collections

Opening a boutique in central Manhattan meant that watch lovers, such as Andy Warhol, would design their own watch and choose the form of the case, the look of the dial, or the type of the bracelet. More than just a type of service itself, this was a demonstration of unique craftsmanship, a symbol of refined elegance and extravagance, which has continued to this day.

Timeless watch and jewellery collections were created in the workshops at La Côte-aux-Fées and the new, modern one in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva: the Altiplano, Piaget Polo, Limelight Gala, Possession, Piaget Sunlight, Extremely Piaget and Piaget Rose.

The 2012 Rose collection was inspired by an actual light-pink flower. Promoted at Geneva’s 1982 International Rose Competition, it was named after Yves Piaget. Captivated by flowers and nurturing a true passion for roses, he launched the Monaco International Rose Competition.

Sumptuous with its eighty delicate petals, with an intoxicating but intense and above all recognizable fragrance, a real rose is as desirable in the garden as the gold and diamond ones are on the wrist or around the neck.

Essence of Extraleganza

Piaget started celebrating its big anniversary at the Watches & Wonders show in April in Geneva. As expected, there was a surprise: 67 years after the first ultra-thin calibre 9P and 6 years after presenting the thinnest watch in the world–the Altiplano Ultimate Concept–Piaget has once again pushed the boundaries of horological ingenuity.

For the first time in history, a tourbillon has been inserted into a 2 mm thin watch with a diameter of 41.5 mm and a guaranteed water resistance to a depth of 20 metres. It took Piaget three years to incorporate 150 years of human and horological history into the Altiplano Ultimate Concept Tourbillon.

Text Dubravka Tomeković Aralica

Photos Ben Hasset / Piaget

Video Piaget