Piaget Jewellery Watch Yellow Gold and Diamonds, 1950s

Identity

Piaget jewellery watch, 18-carat yellow gold, 1950s. Manual-winding mechanical movement. 18-carat yellow gold case, round, 16 mm in diameter, bezel with radiating reeding broken by four polished gold blocks, cross-hatched case band, winding crown on the caseback. Triangular lugs each set with three diamonds. Champagne dial, applied gold baton indexes, gold hands. Mineral crystal. Black leather strap, 18-carat gold pin buckle.

Horological context

Founded in 1874 in La Côte-aux-Fées, in the Neuchâtel Jura, by Georges Piaget, the maison first supplied movements before signing its own watches under its name in the mid-twentieth century. Piaget made itself the specialist of the ultra-thin: 1957 brought the manual-winding 9P calibre, two millimetres thick; 1960 the automatic micro-rotor 12P, then the thinnest in the world at 2.3 mm. Even before those calibres freed the designers, the maison was making jewellery watches for women in which the case belongs as much to the jeweller's craft as to the watchmaker's: worked bezels, gem-set lugs, dials reduced to a few millimetres, the winding crown moved to the back so that nothing of it shows. These 1950s pieces open the way to the jewellery production that would make Piaget's name in the decades that followed — hardstone dials, clous de Paris bezels, extremely slim cases.

Character

The bezel and the lugs dominate this jewellery watch, drawing the eye by their size and their respective geometry, the lugs adding the contrast of white gold against yellow. To keep the design pure, the crown sits on the caseback, and nothing interrupts the circle seen from the front.

Serviced. Very good condition with normal wear. Delivered with the Contre-Temps box and the Contre-Temps 12-month warranty certificate.