Audemars Piguet

Audemars Piguet is a brand that is so deeply tied to the production of complicated watches generally. More specifically, few complications have as rich a history at the brand as the perpetual calendar. Even before the company’s first workshop was established in 1875, the two co-founders, Jules Louis Audemars and Edward Auguste Piguet, had implemented similar astronomical complications in their apprenticeship watches.

The Edward Piguet collection is named for one of the brand’s co-founders and references elegant Art Deco wristwatch designs of the 1920s. Introduced in the early 1990s, the Audemars Piguet Edward Piguet Quantième Perpétuel features what was at the time, the world’s smallest and thinnest perpetual calendar caliber. The Audemars Piguet caliber 2003/2 measures just 3.2mm thick and 23mm in diameter and is based on the manually-wound cal. 2003 and utilizes the 2805QP calendar module.

The reference 25734 hails from the earlier generation of these Edward Piguet Quantième Perpétuel wristwatches, evident by the caliber 2003/2 inside and an overall thinner, more elegant case as compared to the second generation, found under references that begin with 258 and 259. Platinum-cased examples of the Edward Piguet Quantième Perpétuel are rare to begin with, but the present watch is made all the more collectible and elegant by its semi-skeletonized dial with blue translucent chapter rings and Breguet numerals. The movement retainer and caliber both feature beautiful floral hand-engraving – completing the look. Numbered on the caseback as “No. 8”, only a small handful of these semi-skeletonized Edward Piguet Quantième Perpétuel wristwatches have ever appeared on the market.