Audemars Piguet — Royal Oak (1972)
Audemars Piguet —
Royal Oak (1972)
A horological composition preserving the Royal Oak as a cultural turning point, placing its technical form within the geography and inherited memory of the Vallée de Joux.
Issued in 2022, the work brings the early C-Series Ref. 5402 into relation with the Lac de Joux and the Dent de Vaulion, joining mechanical identity, landscape and transmission.
Audemars Piguet — Royal Oak (1972)
Recorded Characteristics
Horological form and the memory of the Vallée de Joux
Founded in Le Brassus in 1875, Audemars Piguet introduced the Royal Oak in 1972 and altered the direction of modern watchmaking. Designed by Gérald Genta, it established a new language for the luxury steel sports watch through its integrated bracelet and architectural form.
The composition records the early C-Series Ref. 5402. Behind the case appears the Lac de Joux, while the Dent de Vaulion rises in warm gold tonalities recalling regional legends of buried gold and prospectors drawn to the mountain. Technical form is placed within the landscape from which the wider horological tradition emerged.
The work belongs to an approach developed by the Maison around horological memory. A timepiece preserves mechanical time, while the geography, aspiration and human narrative surrounding it can remain unrecorded. Through composition, those dimensions are joined to the object and carried into a wider structure of cultural transmission.