Audemars Piguet

aaronm
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APs from SbM

Four of the more unusual pieces, the ChronoAP, the Millenary with the AP escapement, a ladies Millenary tourbillon (with stone plate I believe) and one of the concept ROs.





I got a chance to hold and try on the ChronoAP, one of the more eye-catching pieces of the last year, and I must say it makes me somewhat sad.  The piece is fantastic looking, the "hidden" movement, where you see the start(barrels) and end (escapement) but none of the train, is an unusual concept, comes across very different from the Breguet LaTradition--the obvious point of reference.  There are all sorts of unusual details you can only get while holding the piece, for example at a sharp angle you can see the 'table' of the second dial hovering with an almost impossibly thin pinion coming up to drive the hand.  I can't be sure but I think I could actually feel the escapement beat through the case, due to the speed and strength of the springs involved.  I almost with they had made a bit more of the unusual escapement visable, either through the front or the back, but I'm not sure if they could have done that without taking a bite out of the sub-second dial.

But then the size hits and you are brought back to reality, it's not a watch I could even consider wearing, the lugs hang off of both sides of my wrist.  It actually looked more naturally scaled when I have it stretched across the back of my hand than when it was on my wrist.  It also has a very different 'feel' of size than something like a comparable Panny or such, where the design 'reads' the size it is.  Here I found that the watch when viewed without any size cues and from a bit of distance 'read' smaller, your mind made it look like it was a few mm smaller than it was...

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