Audemars Piguet

Its the more formal companion to my AP RO ... and it is the watch, out all that I have, and have had, that gets the most comments from everybody. The dial is fun, baroque, interesting to look at. and the movement, beautiful... and quite loud. Whenever I take the watch off to show somebody, they immediately hear the movement whirling about, and suddenly fall in love with this watch.

As you can tell, it's a marriage with a generic case. The watch, if I remember correctly is from 1895 and made as a hunter pocket watch. I'll tell the story behind it some other day here, but to put it simply: I became very good friends with the person I purchased it from! I've had this for over 4 years and... worn it through many important moments- it's not what I paid for it that is important with this watch, it's the aesthetic it represents, the quality, the tradition it embodies for a brand that is by far my favorite! Every single screw, pinion, detail, has been hand labored by the best craftsmen of AP back at the end of the 19th century....

Another interesting thing of this AP is that it is marked 'extra' it was the highest quality time-only movement at the time, and according to the AP book.. Jules Audemars would personally inspect all movements marked 'extra' before sending them out of the factory. So this very watch passed through the hands and loupe of the founder of AP. For me that's very special, since Jules Audemars also had worked for the company Louis Audemars- which is one of my all time favorite brands! 

So without further ado... here are some pictures of this watch. It has seen LOTS of action, the screws, quite distorted, the movement, touched and scratched by countless services, brutes, and scrappers who finally killed it's original shell... and damaging the dial...but now, fortunately, it sits very nicely in my weekly watch rotation. I think it has a decent home.

Someday when I manage to part with it for long enough, I might recase it in a more noble metal... but now, as bluntly a frankenwatch as it is, it suits me quite fine!

yes... the dial, the dial is quite amazing. Competes with the movement in terms of aesthetic prowess.. I'm sure some expert could say how many different firings it went through, but it is quite spectacular, three dimentional wiht the touches of raised gold.... it really is what makes this watch- the dial!

Hope you enjoy the photographic essay here. And thanks for letting me splash these images all over this forum,

S

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